Daniel 5 tells the story of King Belshazzar, who was having a party when a hand appeared and wrote on a wall. Belshazzar was frightened offered to promote anyone to third ruler of the kingdom if he could interpret this spectacle. Daniel steps up, explains the handwriting, and Belshazzar dies shortly thereafter.
Belshazzar was the center of some controversy in the 19th century. A lot of people thought that he never really existed. One Bible commentator wrote:
But the hand and the writing! Here is miracle upon miracle, and altogether without an object. There is no historical basis whatever, on which such an account can rest. The whole must be pure fiction […]
But a man like Belshazzar would never have received such an ominous prediction from the mouth of Daniel, and have rewarded him for it. The whole thing is a palpable forgery, got up merely to magnify Daniel. […]
But how could the writing be explained, Daniel be promoted and proclaimed as third in the government, and the city be taken besides, all in one night? Improbable altogether, if not impossible.1
Part of the reason for this attack was that the Bible was the only book available that mentioned Belshazzar by name. There were extra-biblical records that mentioned Cyrus and King Nabonidus, but not Belshazzar. For example, Herodotus wrote:
Labynetos [i.e., Nabonned, Nabonidus], and being ruler over the Assyrians, against whom Cyrus was marching […]
[Cyrus] conducted the [Euphrates] by a channel into the lake, […] and so made the former course of the river passable by the sinking of the stream. […] the Persians […] entered by the bed of the river Euphrates into Babylon, the stream having sunk so far that it reached about to the middle of a man’s thigh. […] the Persians came upon them unexpectedly […]
Babylon then had thus been taken for the first time2
Herodotus lived within a century of Nabonidus and he is a pretty reliable historian. Of course, what he recorded about the fall of Babylon is not in conflict with Scripture. Jeremiah said that Babylon would fall suddenly (Jer 51:8) and even gave a precise timeframe (Jer 29:10). In fact, some even interpret Is 44:27-45:3 to be describing how Cyrus rerouted the water to invade Babylon, but I digress.
Nonetheless, some folks assumed that since Herodotus didn’t mention Belshazzar by name, then the Bible must be a work of fiction:
But the shocking profanation of Belshazzar! All antiquity fails to supply us with any such example.
The name Belshazzar is a mistaken one. The name of the last king was Nabonned. The writer has given us a mere figment instead of a real name.
The whole story is disfigured and falsified by the author, who was neither an eye-witness of the occurrences, nor accurately acquainted with the history of them.3
The above commentator wrote in 1835. In 1853, some archaeologists started excavating the city of Ur (where Abram was from), and they found a cylinder that Nabonidus had written, which mentioned Belshazzar by name:
As for me, Nabonidus, king of Babylon, save me from sinning against your great godhead and grant me as a present a life long of days, and as for Belshazzar, the eldest son – my offspring – instill reverence for your great godhead in his heart and may he not commit ant cultic mistake, may he be sated with a life of plenitude.4
By the way, I’m a bit of an Ur nerd, because I lived in that area of Iraq for a year in 2005.
Anyhow, so King Nabonidus mentions Belshazzar, his firstborn son, by name. By the way, as the king’s firstborn, it makes sense that Belshazzar could offer the third place in the kingdom to Daniel. This threw the biblical critics for a loop, so they fired back:
There was a Belshazzar—Bel-sar-utsur, “Bel protect the prince”—and we possess a clay cylinder of his father Nabunaid, the last king of Babylon, praying the moon-god […] But if we follow Herodotus, this Belshazzar never came to the throne;
[…] there was no King Belshazzar5
So, they recognize that Belshazzar did exist, but they don’t contend that he was king. Unfortunately for the critics, archaeologists found another tablet and translated it to reveal that Belshazzar was indeed given kingship:
he [Nabonidus] entrusted the army [?] to his oldest son, his first born, the troops in the country he ordered under his command. He let everything go, entrusted the kingship to him6
That put an end to the debate. Belshazzar unquestionably did exist and he was a king. Nobody is challenging this historical fact anymore.
- Cäsar von Lengerke, Das Buch Daniel (Königsberg: Gebrüder Borntraeger, 1835) translated and quoted in Moses Stuart, A Commentary on the Book of Daniel (Boston: Crocker & Brewster 1850).
- Read the whole thing here.
- Frederic William Farrar, Expositor’s Bible: The Book of Daniel.
- Read the whole cylinder here.
- Frederic William Farrar, Expositor’s Bible: The Book of Daniel.
- Read “The Persian Verse Account of Nabonidus” here.
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