Daniel for Fun and Prophet, Part II - A Scholarly Treatise on Chapter 3
Ok. Maybe this isn’t going to be "scholarly." Maybe it isn't even a "treatise"(whatever THAT is). But it IS Chapter 3, so shut-the-hell up and don’t nitpick.
For you old-timer apostates and dubbies, we are about to take a trip down memory lane. As we carefully study chapter 3 of Daniel, please recall our somber dubbie book studies of yore on this same subject matter. Recall the earth-shattering importance we believed it had on our planet’s current batch of humans as this terrifying story of inspired Bible prophecy played out in its prophetic types, anti-types, arch-types, ancient-types, modern-types and helvetica-types into this very day. In short, this ancient historical event is VERY important for us to understand today. Our very sanity depends upon it.
In my first installment about the wonderful, wild and wacky world of Daniel,
Introduction to Daniel - For Fun and Prophetwe discussed Chapters 1 and 2 and the prophecy of the dream with the image of gold, clay and other goofy stuff. In this installment we shall continue with the book of Daniel and discuss the story of a "real" statue of gold which supposedly was almost as tall as the biggest Watchtower lie.
To help you clearly understand the "deeper-things" of Daniel chapter 3, questions to the material being discussed are presented along-the-way in our study.
Daniel 3:1:
3 Neb·u·chad·nez'zar the king made an image of gold, the height of which was sixty cubits [and] the breadth of which was six cubits. He set it up in the plain of Du'ra in the jurisdictional district of Babylon.
Just what did this image represent, anyway? Various Bible Commentators have suggested it was an image of Nezzy's god "Bel" (fondly nicknamed "Bel") or that it was of Nezzy himself. Bel was also called "Marduk" (fondly nicknamed "Ducky"). More importantly, it was something that would be the object of idolatry. Therefore, I think we can safely conclude it wasn't an image of a golden cucumber. Or a chicken. Nobody bows down to cucumbers or chickens. Even ones made of gold. They bow down to gods. Ancient gods are most often somewhat human-like in appearance. People prefer to create their gods looking like humans so the believers can relate to them. With the possible exception of cucumbers themselves, and some frustrated members of a certain human gender, nobody can relate to a cucumber god.
Therefore, it can be reasonably assumed that Bel or Marduk looked more like a man than anything else. In fact, here is a link that shows an ancient rendering of Marduk in a boat with what looks like a little ducky sitting on his shoulder! I am not making this up: see it for yourself. Perhaps that's how Marduk got the nickname "Ducky."
Question for Readers: a) Why can we be certain the statue of gold in Daniel 3 was not that of a cucumber? b) Is it considered good form for gods to have little duckies on their shoulders?
Note from the picture in the link I provided that despite the goofy beard, goofy hat and goofy ducky, Marduk looks just like a typical guy who just happens to have a goofy beard, hat and duck. There are a few strange things about this guy, though. For one thing, notice that the thumb on his right hand is on the wrong side of the hand! His right palm is facing his leg and his thumb is in the back! Also, the pet animal sitting beside him is somewhat strange and wears his very own goofy hat. I don't know about you, but I find it hard to believe that the Babylonians could ever have risen to become a world power when they didn't even know where their own thumbs were supposed to be.
Question for Readers: When your arms hang normally at your sides and you are completely sober, are your thumbs in front or are they in back? (Try to answer before looking. Take your time.)
From here we shall proceed assuming the image of gold in Daniel 3 was human-like and not cucumber-like. Nezzy had the masses of Babylonian people gathered together around this image and one of Nezzy's toadies made the following announcement:
4 And the herald was crying out loudly: "To YOU it is being said, O peoples, national groups and languages, 5 that at the time that YOU hear the sound of the horn, the pipe, the zither, the triangular harp, the stringed instrument, the bagpipe and all sorts of musical instruments, YOU fall down and worship the image of gold that Neb·u·chad·nez'zar the king has set up. 6 And whoever does not fall down and worship will at the same moment be thrown into the burning fiery furnace.
These three verses provide us with lots of nifty information.
1) The word "you" is capitalized a lot and that is supposed to mean something. The Hebrews didn't have any capital letters and Fred Franz is dead, so I guess we’ll never know it means, then.
2) The "herald" guy must have had a VERY loud voice for the entire City to be able to hear him. Either that, or the Babylonian Chamber of Commerce engaged in a bit of puffery about the actual size of their City.
3) The musical instruments used by the Babylonians sucked.
4) When it came to punishments, Nezzy didn’t mess around.
5) The fiery furnace was right next to the statue. You couldn't roast non-conformers in the "same moment" if the furnace was say, five miles away. This strategic placement right next to the statue was what the WTS today calls "encouragement."
6) Nezzy was an idiot to do any of this since he already knew that the Hebrew God was vastly superior to his own gods. He was taking a big risk that might just piss off the Hebrew God. If you read Part 1 of this series, you'll recall that after Dano proved to be the only one who could recite and interpret Nezzy's clay-feet-man dream, Nezzy still didn't have the common sense to return the silverware or the King he had stolen from Jerusalem. So what he was now doing could end up being very dangerous for him. He was pushing the "don't piss off Jehovah" envelope and that is not a good thing to do.
Question for Readers: a) Choose one of the following that best describes Nebuchadnezzer's intelligence from the evidence we have so far: 1) Rocket scientist, 2) Very bright, 3) Box of rocks.
b) Given their technology at the time, describe any other kind of furnace that was available to the ancient Babylonians other than "fiery" ones.
c) Based upon Daniel 3:6, describe a type of ancient Babylonian furnace that was only a "fiery furnace", but not a "burning" fiery furnace.
Next, my conclusion in observation #3 should be obvious to anyone who knows a thing about music. Can you imagine the cacophony created when you mix horns, pipes, zithers (horizontal harp-like thingys which sound like alley cats in heat), triangle-harps, stringed instruments and the worst of lot, BAGPIPES, all together? It would be like being in musical hell. That's probably why nobody cares to listen to "Nebuchadnezzer's 5th Symphony" these days. That’s also why that kind of music is only played today in maximum-security Middle-Eastern prisons as punishment for offenders whose crimes were so heinous that chopping off their heads simply wasn't good enough.
Look, I don't care to bow down to Babylonian images any more than you do, but I would do it in a heartbeat if it would only make that kind of music STOP! Therefore, the "falling down" to worship part would be easy to get the masses to do. When people heard that musical crap they probably would have dropped to their knees, put their hands over their ears and their heads between their legs just to stop the noise torture. Instant obeisance was assured! Nothing religious about that. It was purely a survival mechanism. Nezzy didn't even need to threaten people with a fiery furnace. The music alone was enough to do the trick. In fact, it was probably self-defeating because some people might have even jumped into the fiery furnace just to escape the music.
Question for Readers: a) Do you think playing bagpipe and zither music together is a violation of basic human rights? b) Because of the torturous nature of that kind of music, do you think the burning fiery furnace was an unnecessary waste of scarce Babylonian resources and contributed to Global Warming?
The "herald" in that verse mentioned that in addition to the instruments already described there were also "all sorts of musical instruments." That exact phrase is also mentioned several times in that chapter of Daniel and is yet another example of how stupid (or rather sloppy) Nezzy was. Why? Because his decree provided a loophole to escape punishment for not bowing down to the image. Of course, the loophole could only be used by people strong enough not to let their knees buckle when they heard the music-from-hell. This would basically limit the loophole to people who were tone deaf.
"Mr. Nebuchadnezzer sir, I didn't bow down because I didn't hear ALL sorts of musical instruments playing as you said there must be. I only heard SOME sorts of musical instruments. Nobody was playing the piccolo and that is also a musical instrument. Therefore I didn't think I was required to bow down, since legally speaking, I didn't break your law."
Unfortunately, back then there was no such thing as "beyond a reasonable doubt", so the guy would have probably been toasted in the furnace anyway, loophole or no loophole.
Question for Readers: a) Describe the judicial process for appealing a guilty verdict from king Nebuchadnezzer. b) Were deaf people ever tossed into the burning fiery furnace even though they couldn't hear the music?
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THE REALLY, REALLY GOOFY 90 FOOT STATUE OF GOLD
So here we are. We have a very large statue of gold as an idol which measures 60 cubits tall by 6 cubits in width. The verse said "breadth" instead of "width", but my dictionary tells me they mean the same thing and I'm fairly convinced my dictionary has no reason to lie to me, even if it wasn't printed by the Watchtower Corporation.
Since a cubit is roughly 18 inches, we have a 90-foot tall gold statue which is 9-feet wide and which was allegedly built by Nezzy the Babylonian Moron who worshipped the god with the shoulder-ducky and thumbs-in-the-back. Remember, this was no dream he had. This was the real deal. That statue would be about as high as a 9-story building and that would take a LOT of gold even to just cover a statue made from something else. If it was built of solid gold, it would have probably sagged into a blob on its own weight or bankrupted the Babylonian Empire. Do you realize just how high a nine-story building is? Hint: it's 3 times higher than a 3-story building, which is pretty high itself. Jump off of one if you don't believe me.
Question for Readers: How many 3-story buildings would have to be stacked to make them as tall as a 9-story statue? You may use a calculator, but only in moderation.
But that is not the most goofy part by any means. If the 90-foot statue was 9-feet wide, we'll have to conclude it was 9-feet wide at the shoulders, which is the widest part of the human body. (Although there were a few JW females I once knew who just happened to be wider than the shoulders in a place somewhat lower than the shoulders. Let’s face it: they had huge butts. How can I put it delicately?)
Question for Readers: Did you have JW females with huge butts in your Kingdom Hall, too? Do you like females with huge butts? If yes, explain your answer, but not when children are present.
This statue's height-to-width ratio is exactly 10-to-1, so we can easily figure out what that statue actually looked like by comparing it with normal human dimensions, using myself as an example. (I do not have a huge butt. Yet.) I have a fairly average build for a guy: I'm a little taller than 6-feet or 72 inches, am 21 inches wide at the shoulders. My height is 3.4 times the width of my shoulders. For that Babylonian statue to have the same proportions as a human, it would have to have a width at the shoulders of over 26 feet, instead of just 9 feet. With shoulders that narrow one can reasonably conclude the statue was an outrageously wimpy representation of a male human.
Why am I doing all this? Just wait and you'll see why. You will be able to imagine what a 9-story-tall gold statue was supposed to look like if you can imagine what a normal human body would look like with the same overall proportions as that statue.
Question for Readers: a) 90 divided by 3.4 equals: 1) Greenwich Mean Time, 2) Pi R Squared, 3) A Huge Butt
b) Are you still trying to come up with a believable answer for why you like females with huge butts?
For my body to have a 10-to-1 ratio of height-to-width, my shoulders would be a little over 7 inches wide, since I'm 72 inches tall. That means my shoulders would be as wide as the span of a small stretched-out hand.
I am 15 inches wide at the hips. This makes the width of my hips equal to 71% of my shoulder 7 inch width. My hips would therefore be 5 inches wide. (That's a little wider than the palm of your hand.) This would make each of my thighs less than 2 1/2 inches in diameter and my calves about 1 inch each in diameter. My arms would be about 1/2" in diameter.
So, that’s me as Nezzy’s image scaled down to human size: A 6-foot tall man made of gold with the following diameters : 7 inch shoulders, 5 inch hips, 2 inch thighs, 1 inch calves and 1/2 inch arms.
Question for Readers: a) If I had all the proportions of Nezzy's image and you saw me walking around, would you want to date me? b) If not, would you date me if I were made of gold? c) Would you only consider dating me if you had huge butt?
Can you imagine a 6-foot tall man walking around with hips as width as your palm, thighs as wide as your thumb is long and calves less than HALF that wide? Can you imagine a 6-foot man striding along and swinging around arms as big around as your thumb? And you thought the 10-foot tall creatures in the movie "Avatar" looked stupid-skinny? Just imagine the 90-foot tall stick man made of gold!
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
It gets worse when it comes to the feet of the image. Now keep in mind that the overall proportions of the idol image the author of Daniel described when he was smoking way too much weed. They are about 300 percent less than the overall proportions of a real man, even if that real man has a ducky on his shoulder and his thumbs are on backwards. How big would the feet be, then? My foot is, well, one foot long. So is my other foot. This would mean that my 6-foot-tall human stick man would be walking around on 4-inch feet: feet about as long as your palm is wide!
Question for Readers: a) Did you confirm the math that I've used here? b) Do you even know how to do any math? c) Do you even give a shit?
THE REALLY, REALLY GOOFY PEDESTAL THEORY
"But wait!", some will say. "Maybe the statue was on a pedestal." Ok, fine. For the statue to have anything close to normal human proportions, the pedestal would have to be HUGE! It would have to be about 6 stories high, and the statue would then only be about 3 stories high. This would make the pedestal THREE times as high as the statue that was on it! You would have to look up 6 stories before you could even see the statue's feet! Without any question, that would make it the DUMBEST gigantic statue ever made. Seriously, who's going to bow down to any huge gold stick-man like that without laughing his ass off the whole time?
Question for Readers: If people bowed down to that image but laughed their asses off at the same time, do you think they would have been thrown into the burning fiery furnace, since it was not technically illegal to laugh their asses off while bowing?
AN ENGINEERING NIGHTMARE
That statue would not only be outrageously high, it would have be very narrow (by comparison) throughout its length. Since we are talking stick-man proportions, the contrast of height-to-width is ludicrous. How did they raise it? More importantly, how did they keep it up without guy wires? The only kind of guy wires they could have had were probably made from the hemp they had left over from the weed they were smoking, and hemp guy wires 90 feet in the air would be a bitch to maintain and repair. The wind really rips at 90 feet in the air, especially in MesoPOTamia. I suspect that stupid gold image toppled over in the first few days, and Nezzy had the whole record about it erased and the tongues cut out of anyone who dared mention it again. I also suspect Nezzy was smoking WAY too much weed when he came up with the idea in the first place.
OR, if the image didn't fall down right away,
WERE THE BABYLONIANS TOO BUSY LAUGHING TO WRITE ANYTHING DOWN?
Why didn't the Babylonians write down anything about this statue? It must have cost a FORTUNE to build and certainly would have qualified as one of the wonders of the ancient world. That is, IF they had a category called the "Idiotic Wonders of the Ancient World." I mean the Babylonians wrote down EVERYTHING. There are over 15,000 business records which were discovered that prove the Genital Times prophecy of the WTS is bogus because it is based upon the wrong starting date, which as every real Bible scholar knows is 1977: the year Elvis died. Why then, didn't someone make a record for posterity of the "Idiotic-60-cubit-gold-statue-with-the-ducky-on-the-shoulder-and-the-toothpick-legs-and-the-thumbs-on-backwards-that-everybody-had-to-bow-to-when-they-played-the-really-irritating-instruments-which-made-your-ears-hurt-even-though-you-were-laughing-your-ass-off?"
Question for Readers: a) Can you create a hyphenated sentence as long as that? b) Was Nezzy a stoner? c) Will Jehovah kill me for saying all of this?
Oh, wait! The anonymous author of Daniel DID make a note of it for posterity! My bad. Tell you what: if I wrote that ridiculous story and hoped people would actually believe it was true, I'd keep my authorship anonymous, too. Besides, if Nezzy was as vindictive as the Bible tells us he was, he wouldn't have liked it at all if someone in his day wrote all about his stupidity in detail and then was dumb enough to let Nezzy know he was the one who wrote it. Think: "burning fiery furnace time for YOU, bubba! With lions!"
Question for Readers: a) Why was it a smart thing for the author of Daniel to put the blame on Daniel for that book? b) Do you think if the author of Daniel were alive today, he would still be laughing his ass off?
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Let us continue with this Divinely Inspired(tm) account in the book of Daniel:
In Daniel chapter 3 and verses 8-12, some of Nezzy’s own people came to him and ratted on Hat’rack, Flea’shack and A-bed’we-go because they only worshiped their own god and wouldn’t worship the 90-foot gold stick-man god. Remember that these three Hebrew guys were appointed to high places in Nezzy’s administration and now others in Nezzy’s administration were betraying them. This is what is known as "politics."
Note: some modern Bible translations render the name of the second Hebrew in the burning fiery furnace as "Ra'dio'shach."
In verses 13-19 of Chapter 3, Nezzy got very pissed off. He brought Hat’rack, Flea’shack and A-bed’we-go before him and they basically told him to shove it. They wouldn’t worship any of his gods and if they died, so be it. If they lived, so be it.
So Nezzy had some of his guys heat up the (burning fiery) furnace to 7 times its normal heat. But by heating up the furnace so much this happened:
22 Just because the king’s word was harsh and the furnace was heated to excess, these able-bodied men that took up Sha'drach, Me'shach and A·bed'ne·go were the ones that the fiery flame killed.
This proves one thing: Nezzy was not only stupid, Nezzy was also a prick.
Question for Readers: a) Did Nebuchadnezzer have an anger-management problem? Explain. b) Which of the following best describes Nebuchadnezzer in verses 13-22: 1) Saintly, 2) Benevolent, 3) Prick?
Note that Nezzy had someone tie up those 3 Hebrews before they were tossed into the furnace. As if it was necessary to tie up people in case they might try to "run away" from being locked in a furnace with about 3 gazillion degrees of heat wrapped around their bodies. So into the furnace they went. The first things to burn were the ropes they were tied up with. HAHAHAHAHA!
In verses 24 and 25 Nezzy noticed that Hat’rack, Flea’shack and A-bed’we-go were not only not hurt by the fire, they were having a good old time walking around in the fire (perhaps even roasting a few marshmallows) and they also had another FRIEND who had joined them! This scared the crap out of Nezzy. Tell you what. That would have scared the crap out of me, too.
Question for Readers: a) Do you think the 3 Hebrews just roasted marshmallows, or do you think they also made smores while in the burning fiery furnace? b) If you were headed for a burning fiery furnace, would you have the foresight to bring some marshmallows?
Verses 26-28 tells us that Nezzy decided he’d better not mess with that Hebrew god anymore, so he gave Hat’rack, Flea’shack and Abed’we-go the First Amendment Right to freedom of religion. At the same time, he revoked his own people’s First Amendment Right to freedom of speech in Verse 29:
29 And from me an order is being put through, that any people, national group or language that says anything wrong against the God of Sha'drach, Me'shach and A·bed'ne·go should be dismembered, and its house should be turned into a public privy; forasmuch as there does not exist another god that is able to deliver like this one."
There you go again, Nezzy just like you did with your conjurers in Chapters 1 and 2 of Daniel: dismembering people and turning their houses into shitters. Back then, people shat everywhere, including the streets. So what's the big deal about turning a house into another place to do it? Show some more imagination man! Make 'em listen to bagpies instead! Well at least you gave Hat’rack, Flea’shack and Abed’we-go swell government jobs with typical government benefits like 298 days off each year plus 6 weeks of paid vacation.
No one knows what happened to the 90 foot gold stick-man statue after that. It was rumored that the author of Daniel died while laughing-his-ass off, but that cannot be confirmed.
Question for Readers: a) If Nezzy were alive today, would you want him on the Supreme Court deciding your judicial appeals? b) Did Daniel and the 3 Hebrews compromise their integrity to Jehovah by becoming Babylonian political appointees? c) Would they be able to qualify to be elders as long as they held those government jobs?
I would have cited Daniel 4:1-3 where Nezzy is all gushy in singing his praises to the Hebrew god, but it is just too sappy and Nezzy drools more than is absolutely necessary, so if you want to read it yourself, go right ahead. The point is this: by now one would think that Nezzy would have learned his lessons not to piss off the Hebrew God. But even though I’ve stated it numerous times before, I will state it again. Nezzy was stupid AND stubborn AND a prick. Plus, he had terrible taste and sense of proportion when it came to making gold statues.
In the final installment, Nezzy ends up in hot water again, and I will finally reveal why simple logic will show that if the WTS explanation of the Genital Times Prophecy using Daniel 4 as proof is true, it is a huge embarrassment to any self-respecting God. As promised before, no chronology and no goofy year-for-a-day bullshit will be used.
Question for Readers: In these critical last days full of violence, crime and raging fiery furnaces, how can the Bible story of the 90-foot tall-golden-stick-man-with-the-thumbs-on-backwards-and-a-ducky-on-the-shoulder be used to help you better your own life as a Christian? Give some examples that can be used at Circuit Assemblies. If you can't think of anything, make up something that can be used at Circuit Assemblies anyway.
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Final Bonus Quiz: Without referring to the WT Publications, but using your vast experience of the way the WT Corporation interprets scripture, please select the correct answers for the modern-day fulfillments of Daniel chapter 3.
1) Wicked Nebuchadnezzer was a Prophetic Type of which CLASS today? a) all the people who are not part of the WT Corporation. b) the WT Corporation. c) Rubber duckies.
2) The idolatrous gold statue was a Prophetic Type of which CLASS today? a) all the religions who worship idols instead of worshipping Printing Corporations. b) Fans of Pablo Picasso. c) Anorexics.
3) The 3 faithful Hebrews were a Prophetic Type of which CLASS today? a) Kosher Foods. b) the Watchtower Printing Corporation. c) Marshmallows.
4) The "burning fiery furnace" was a prophetic symbol of what in our day? a) Armageddon. b) A judicial committee hearing. c) Meetings. d) Field service. e) The Circuit Servant’s visit. (You may choose more than one answer.)
5) The Babylonians who ratted on the 3 Hebrews to Nezzy for apostasy are prophetic of what CLASS today? a) Nosy neighbors. b) Smores. c) Dub family members.
6) The music and instruments from Daniel 3 prophetically represent what today? a) Mozart. b) Beethoven. c) Kingdom Melodies.
7) What is the best way to understand the significance and importance of this story in the book of Daniel? a) Receive a free home Bible-study. b) Get dropped as a baby. c) Get stoned.
Thank you.
Brother Farkel, Scholarly Treatise CLASS