Main news for 16 March 2023

Today it is hard to say with certainty what stands behind the whole story with the golden image. Some historians have suggested that either at the end of Nebuchadnezzar's reign or during the reign of Belshazzar, a religious reform was carried out on the king's initiative, during which the altars of royal sanctuaries, previously closed to ordinary people, were opened, to the great displeasure of the priests.

After this, the official Babylonian cults, such as the cult of Bel-Marduk, the patron of Babylon, became public and obligatory for worship. Earlier it had been assumed that all inhabitants of the country adhered to the state religion by default; now it was required to demonstrate loyalty to the gods of Babylonia publicly. It is possible that during this period, toward the end of the exile, a conflict between the Synagogue and the Babylonian authorities on religious grounds also took shape, vague echoes of which can be found in the second part of the Book of Isaiah. Soon, however, Babylonia fell under the blows of the Persian army, and the situation changed radically.

Of course, in the Book of Daniel, written much later than the events mentioned, they are reflected more as legend than as a historically reliable event. But the legend proved more than timely when the book was written, because it was written during the persecutions of the Synagogue under the Syrian king Antiochus Epiphanes. These persecutions were organized and systematic. Antioch himself demanded unwavering public veneration of Zeus by all his subjects without exception, under different names in different lands, as often happened in antiquity; he seriously considered Zeus his father.

Each person in his turn had to offer a public sacrifice to Zeus, or to Baal-Shamem, as he was officially called in Judea, and for every believing Jew this was equivalent to apostasy. It was then that many martyrs appeared in the Synagogue, but also many apostates. The story of the confession of the three youths was meant to support those who wanted to keep faithfulness to the God of Israel and to the faith of their fathers. Of course, first of all this is a story about a miracle, about God's miraculous intervention, supporting His witnesses and preserving their lives.

But in the text of the story there sounds an understanding that the miracle might not have happened. God Himself knows when to intervene in a situation, if such intervention is needed at all. But faithfulness to God is unconditional; it does not depend on miracles. Such an attitude toward miracles becomes understandable if we remember that in the time of the Maccabees, when the book was written, faith in the universal resurrection on the day of Judgment and the coming of the Messiah was already widespread. Death for the faith was not the end of the road, but only its beginning. And this was the road into the Kingdom, from which one must not turn aside, even if the price is earthly life.