WEBVTT 1 00:00:00.120 --> 00:00:03.480 We remember him as the man who never bowed before 2 00:00:03.520 --> 00:00:07.040 an empire. And yet Daniel let Babylon change his name, 3 00:00:07.519 --> 00:00:10.960 change his food, change the language he thought in, and 4 00:00:11.080 --> 00:00:13.400 even the profession he would devote the rest of his 5 00:00:13.519 --> 00:00:17.679 life to. He yielded on almost everything, And even so 6 00:00:18.199 --> 00:00:21.480 he spent seventy years inside the nation that raised his 7 00:00:21.600 --> 00:00:24.640 city and burned his temple, and he came out of 8 00:00:24.679 --> 00:00:28.480 there without having stopped being who he was. Seventy years, 9 00:00:29.160 --> 00:00:32.679 almost an entire human life under the roof of the 10 00:00:32.799 --> 00:00:36.719 enemy that had taken everything from his world. That's the 11 00:00:36.759 --> 00:00:41.159 contradiction of Daniel. How do you let them change almost 12 00:00:41.200 --> 00:00:44.600 everything about you for decades and not end up turned 13 00:00:44.640 --> 00:00:49.000 into someone else? The answer is more uncomfortable than it seems. 14 00:00:49.399 --> 00:00:54.079 There was a single line, one small and almost invisible, 15 00:00:54.439 --> 00:00:59.240 that he refused to cross. Everything else he handed over, 16 00:01:00.000 --> 00:01:03.960 and most people miss exactly that part. Everyone knows the 17 00:01:03.960 --> 00:01:08.239 fiery furnace, everyone knows the den of lions, But between 18 00:01:08.280 --> 00:01:12.840 miracle and miracle, decades past decades of something much harder 19 00:01:12.879 --> 00:01:16.319 to survive than a lion or a flame. Daily life 20 00:01:16.319 --> 00:01:20.079 inside the most powerful empire on earth, the day to day, 21 00:01:20.239 --> 00:01:23.719 the routine, the slow pressure, year after year of a 22 00:01:23.760 --> 00:01:26.640 system designed to make you forget who you are. What 23 00:01:26.879 --> 00:01:29.280 was it really like to live in there? What did 24 00:01:29.359 --> 00:01:31.560 he eat? What did he see when he woke up? 25 00:01:31.840 --> 00:01:34.760 What did he study? What did the city smell like? 26 00:01:35.159 --> 00:01:38.000 How does a man stay faithful to his God for 27 00:01:38.079 --> 00:01:42.000 seventy years in the capital of foreign gods. That's what 28 00:01:42.040 --> 00:01:46.200 we're going to reconstruct today, peace by piece, and not 29 00:01:46.319 --> 00:01:50.000 with pious legends, but with what the Biblical text says 30 00:01:50.040 --> 00:01:53.560 in one hand and what the archaeologists have unearthed in 31 00:01:53.599 --> 00:01:57.680 the other, because there are clay tablets buried for two thousand, 32 00:01:57.719 --> 00:02:01.000 five hundred years that confirm the exact world in which 33 00:02:01.079 --> 00:02:04.680 Daniel opened his eyes every morning. Before we go on, 34 00:02:05.120 --> 00:02:07.799 let me ask you something quick. If you like this 35 00:02:07.920 --> 00:02:10.879 kind of history, the real kind, with the Bible and 36 00:02:11.039 --> 00:02:14.639 archaeology in hand and no inventions, give me a like. 37 00:02:15.479 --> 00:02:18.639 If you don't like it, no problem, Really, I understand perfectly, 38 00:02:18.639 --> 00:02:21.000 and we keep going here. But if you give it, 39 00:02:21.280 --> 00:02:23.919 you help me know that this family wants more of this, 40 00:02:24.280 --> 00:02:27.280 of the serious of the well made. And that's all. 41 00:02:27.800 --> 00:02:32.360 Let's go back to Babylon to understand Daniel's life there. First, 42 00:02:32.400 --> 00:02:35.439 you have to understand how he arrived and the way 43 00:02:35.479 --> 00:02:39.639 he arrived already says almost everything. The book that bears 44 00:02:39.680 --> 00:02:43.479 his name opens with a precise date, in the third 45 00:02:43.599 --> 00:02:46.719 year of the reign of Jehoiakim, king of Judah. Says 46 00:02:46.759 --> 00:02:50.120 the first verse of the first chapter, nebuchad Neza, King 47 00:02:50.159 --> 00:02:54.879 of Babylon, came against Jerusalem and besieged it. This happens 48 00:02:54.960 --> 00:02:58.240 in the sixth century before Christ, more than six hundred 49 00:02:58.319 --> 00:03:01.439 years before the birth of Jesus, and it's not a 50 00:03:01.520 --> 00:03:06.080 loose fact. That same year, the Babylonian army had crushed 51 00:03:06.080 --> 00:03:09.240 the Egyptians in a decisive battle in the north at 52 00:03:09.240 --> 00:03:13.240 a place called Krkamish, and in a single stroke, the 53 00:03:13.280 --> 00:03:16.960 young prince nebukud Neza had become the most powerful man 54 00:03:17.360 --> 00:03:22.199 in the known world. What's interesting is that we don't 55 00:03:22.240 --> 00:03:25.120 know this only from the Bible. There exists a set 56 00:03:25.159 --> 00:03:29.080 of Babylonian tablets written by the empire's own scribes that 57 00:03:29.280 --> 00:03:34.599 historians call the Babylonian Chronicles. They are official records, year 58 00:03:34.639 --> 00:03:38.960 by year of the military campaigns, and those chronicles describe 59 00:03:39.000 --> 00:03:43.800 exactly this. Nebukud Nezar's campaigns toward the west, toward the 60 00:03:43.919 --> 00:03:48.280 land of Judah, the enemy that destroyed Daniel's world, left 61 00:03:48.360 --> 00:03:52.120 written record that it did. So. The two accounts, the 62 00:03:52.159 --> 00:03:55.960 Hebrew and the Babylonian shake hands, now pay attention to 63 00:03:56.000 --> 00:03:59.360 a detail that changes the whole story. The fall of 64 00:03:59.439 --> 00:04:03.639 Jerusalem did not happen all at once. There were several waves. 65 00:04:04.479 --> 00:04:07.919 The first, the one that took Daniel, was the earliest 66 00:04:08.039 --> 00:04:12.039 and the mildest. Judah was not yet raised. It simply 67 00:04:12.080 --> 00:04:16.279 surrendered and became a vassal state, and as proof of submission, 68 00:04:16.360 --> 00:04:19.959 Babylon took two things, some treasures of the temple and 69 00:04:20.079 --> 00:04:24.040 a select group of young men. Years later, a second 70 00:04:24.120 --> 00:04:28.480 deportation would come much harsher, when another king of Judah 71 00:04:28.560 --> 00:04:32.079 rebelled and thousands of people were torn from the land, 72 00:04:32.639 --> 00:04:36.600 and later still a third, the worst of all, the 73 00:04:36.600 --> 00:04:39.519 one that ended with the Temple of Solomon, turned to 74 00:04:39.639 --> 00:04:44.720 ashes and the city reduced to rubble. The Second Book 75 00:04:44.759 --> 00:04:49.120 of Kings, in its chapter twenty four, describes these waves 76 00:04:49.120 --> 00:04:53.040 in chilling detail. But Daniel was not in either of 77 00:04:53.079 --> 00:04:56.120 those two. He left in the first, in the earliest, 78 00:04:56.920 --> 00:05:00.360 when there was still no total war, when Jerusse was 79 00:05:00.360 --> 00:05:05.279 still standing, which means something extremely hard to imagine. When 80 00:05:05.360 --> 00:05:10.040 Daniel arrived in Babylon. His city still existed, his temple 81 00:05:10.120 --> 00:05:14.480 still smoked with incense, not with fire. His family probably 82 00:05:14.879 --> 00:05:18.759 was still alive far away, and he, from the distance 83 00:05:18.879 --> 00:05:21.720 over the years, had to learn little by little how 84 00:05:21.759 --> 00:05:25.439 all of that everything he had left behind was being destroyed. 85 00:05:26.240 --> 00:05:29.439 He didn't live it, he knew it, which is sometimes worse, 86 00:05:29.800 --> 00:05:33.519 and why him. The text is very specific about who 87 00:05:33.560 --> 00:05:36.319 they took. In the fourth verse of the first chapter, 88 00:05:36.720 --> 00:05:41.079 the King's Order describes the exact profile. They were looking for. 89 00:05:41.639 --> 00:05:47.160 Young men without physical defect, handsome, intelligent, wise, with the 90 00:05:47.199 --> 00:05:51.360 capacity to learn, and of noble family, of royal or 91 00:05:51.399 --> 00:05:55.680 aristocratic lineage. Stop a second on that, because its chilling 92 00:05:55.720 --> 00:05:59.160 in its coldness, They did not take the weakest. They 93 00:05:59.199 --> 00:06:02.959 took the best, the flower of a generation, the sons 94 00:06:03.000 --> 00:06:06.600 of the important families, the brilliant young men who would 95 00:06:06.600 --> 00:06:09.879 one day have led Judah. The Empire did not want 96 00:06:09.920 --> 00:06:13.160 slaves to haul bricks. It had whole peoples for that. 97 00:06:13.839 --> 00:06:17.079 What it wanted was to steal a nation's future and 98 00:06:17.199 --> 00:06:20.360 put it to work for itself, To empty Judah of 99 00:06:20.399 --> 00:06:24.920 its potential leaders and turn them into Babylonian leaders. It 100 00:06:25.000 --> 00:06:28.680 was a strategy not a whim. You take the most 101 00:06:28.680 --> 00:06:32.240 promising young men of the conquered people, you educate them 102 00:06:32.240 --> 00:06:35.240 in your culture, You give them your language, your gods, 103 00:06:35.319 --> 00:06:39.480 your customs, and in one generation you have loyal officials 104 00:06:39.519 --> 00:06:42.879 who understand that people from the inside but think like you. 105 00:06:43.560 --> 00:06:49.160 Hostages turned into ambassadors, captives turned into cadres of the empire. 106 00:06:49.480 --> 00:06:52.199 And the young man this happened to, along with three 107 00:06:52.279 --> 00:06:57.279 others from his land, was named Daniel. Now imagine the journey. 108 00:06:57.920 --> 00:07:01.800 The distance between Jerusalem and Babylon, following the routes of 109 00:07:01.839 --> 00:07:05.360 the time, which skirted the desert rather than crossing, it 110 00:07:05.519 --> 00:07:09.839 was more than nine hundred miles weeks and weeks of marching, 111 00:07:10.519 --> 00:07:15.439 a teenager torn from everything, walking day after day toward 112 00:07:15.519 --> 00:07:18.439 a place he had only heard rumors of. And at 113 00:07:18.480 --> 00:07:22.079 the end of that exhausting road, something rose up from 114 00:07:22.079 --> 00:07:25.319 the horizon that no boy from the province of Judah 115 00:07:25.360 --> 00:07:29.600 could even conceive. Because you have to understand what Babylon was. 116 00:07:30.040 --> 00:07:33.399 It was not simply a big city. It was almost 117 00:07:33.399 --> 00:07:36.680 certainly the largest city in the world of its time, 118 00:07:37.240 --> 00:07:41.079 the center of the known universe, probably the first city 119 00:07:41.120 --> 00:07:44.519 in history to approach the great population figures that seemed 120 00:07:44.600 --> 00:07:47.560 normal to us to day. For a young man who 121 00:07:47.560 --> 00:07:51.720 came from Jerusalem, a respectable but small city perched on 122 00:07:51.800 --> 00:07:55.480 its hills, arriving in Babylon must have been as if 123 00:07:55.560 --> 00:07:58.800 you to day left a quiet town and were suddenly 124 00:07:58.839 --> 00:08:02.000 dropped alone in the heart of the most imposing metropolis 125 00:08:02.279 --> 00:08:06.519 on the planet. The river Euphrates ran through the middle 126 00:08:06.519 --> 00:08:09.920 of the city, splitting it into two halves joined by 127 00:08:09.920 --> 00:08:14.279 a bridge. Imagine the noise, the smell of the river water, 128 00:08:14.399 --> 00:08:17.600 mixed with the smoke of a thousand kitchens, with the 129 00:08:17.639 --> 00:08:21.120 sweat of the multitudes, with the incense of the temples, 130 00:08:21.800 --> 00:08:27.879 merchants shouting in languages. Daniel didn't understand soldiers, priests with 131 00:08:28.000 --> 00:08:32.279 shaved heads, chariots, the constant din of hundreds of thousands 132 00:08:32.320 --> 00:08:36.080 of people living piled up between walls. And the walls 133 00:08:36.799 --> 00:08:40.639 are The walls of Babylon were legendary even in antiquity. 134 00:08:41.200 --> 00:08:44.360 The Greek historian Herodotus, who wrote about the city a 135 00:08:44.440 --> 00:08:48.159 century after Daniel, claimed they were so wide that two 136 00:08:48.360 --> 00:08:51.200 war chariots could run side by side along the top, 137 00:08:51.440 --> 00:08:55.120 and so tall that they seemed to touch the sky. Now, 138 00:08:55.200 --> 00:09:01.000 let's be fair. Many historians today consider Herodotus's figures exaggerated, 139 00:09:01.519 --> 00:09:05.960 and archaeology suggests more modest measurements than the ones he gave. 140 00:09:06.879 --> 00:09:11.799 But even discounting the exaggeration, Babylon's defenses were one of 141 00:09:11.840 --> 00:09:15.840 the engineering wonders of their age, a double line of 142 00:09:15.919 --> 00:09:18.919 walls that made the city, in the eyes of any enemy, 143 00:09:19.279 --> 00:09:23.720 simply impregnable. And then there was the gate, the one 144 00:09:23.879 --> 00:09:29.120 young Daniel crossed as he entered the Ishtar Gate. Stop here, 145 00:09:29.559 --> 00:09:33.840 because this is not a conjecture or an imaginary reconstruction. 146 00:09:34.480 --> 00:09:38.120 That gate exists. You can go and see it. The 147 00:09:38.159 --> 00:09:42.600 German archaeologists excavated it at the beginning of the twentieth century, 148 00:09:43.000 --> 00:09:47.320 recovered its bricks, and today a reconstruction of the Ishtar 149 00:09:47.440 --> 00:09:52.200 Gate stands inside a museum in Berlin, thousands of miles 150 00:09:52.200 --> 00:09:55.200 from where it once stood. And when you stand before it, 151 00:09:55.519 --> 00:09:58.759 you understand the shock that boy must have felt. It 152 00:09:58.840 --> 00:10:02.120 was a mass covered with glazed bricks of a deep, intense, 153 00:10:02.159 --> 00:10:05.480 brilliant blue, a blue that, in that world of mud 154 00:10:05.559 --> 00:10:08.840 and desert, must have seemed torn from the sky itself. 155 00:10:09.440 --> 00:10:13.679 And over that blue, in relief rows and rows of animals, 156 00:10:14.080 --> 00:10:17.840 dragons with scaly bodies, dedicated to the god Marduk and 157 00:10:18.000 --> 00:10:21.840 powerful bulls. The gate led to a great avenue, the 158 00:10:21.879 --> 00:10:26.440 processional way, down which on the great festivals the statues 159 00:10:26.480 --> 00:10:30.200 of the gods paraded among crowds in ecstasy. A boy 160 00:10:30.240 --> 00:10:34.120 from Judah, raised in a faith that strictly forbade making 161 00:10:34.159 --> 00:10:40.000 images of God, that forbade statues reliefs of gods sacred animals, 162 00:10:40.559 --> 00:10:43.960 entered his new life by passing through a gate covered 163 00:10:44.000 --> 00:10:48.840 precisely with that images of gods everywhere. It was in 164 00:10:48.960 --> 00:10:53.440 every brick the Empire's message. Here other gods rule, and 165 00:10:53.559 --> 00:10:56.799 you now live in their house, and dominating it all. 166 00:10:56.879 --> 00:11:00.279 Visible from almost any corner of the city, rose thing 167 00:11:00.320 --> 00:11:05.120 even more imposing, a gigantic zigarat, a step tower of 168 00:11:05.240 --> 00:11:08.679 seven levels that climbed toward the sky like a mountain 169 00:11:08.799 --> 00:11:13.240 made by human hands. Its name was Etemenanki, which in 170 00:11:13.279 --> 00:11:15.720 the language of the place meant more or less the 171 00:11:15.799 --> 00:11:19.000 house of the foundation of heaven and Earth. It was 172 00:11:19.039 --> 00:11:23.240 dedicated to Marduk, the chief god of Babylon, and many 173 00:11:23.360 --> 00:11:27.759 scholars have noted the inevitable Echo, a colossal tower on 174 00:11:27.840 --> 00:11:31.840 the plain of Babel that aimed to join heaven with Earth. 175 00:11:32.200 --> 00:11:34.879 Any reader of the scriptures who arrived there could not 176 00:11:34.960 --> 00:11:38.000 help thinking of that other tower, the one in the 177 00:11:38.080 --> 00:11:41.440 Genesis account, the one men built to make a name 178 00:11:41.480 --> 00:11:45.679 for themselves and reach the sky. Daniel lived literally in 179 00:11:45.759 --> 00:11:49.679 the shadow of that idea. And now we come to 180 00:11:49.720 --> 00:11:53.320 the most famous thing about Babylon, the thing every one 181 00:11:53.399 --> 00:11:57.600 associates with the city, the hanging gardens, one of the 182 00:11:57.639 --> 00:12:02.360 seven wonders of the ancient world, green lush terraces that, 183 00:12:02.960 --> 00:12:07.360 according to legend, cascaded over the city like a mountain 184 00:12:07.440 --> 00:12:11.639 of vegetation in the middle of the desert. Well, here 185 00:12:11.679 --> 00:12:14.080 I have to be completely honest with you, because this 186 00:12:14.200 --> 00:12:17.840 channel doesn't sell you fairy tales. Of all the wonders 187 00:12:17.879 --> 00:12:21.320 of the ancient world, the hanging gardens are the only 188 00:12:21.360 --> 00:12:25.120 one for which not a single firm archaeological proof has 189 00:12:25.159 --> 00:12:29.799 ever been found, not one in Babylon, No remains of 190 00:12:29.840 --> 00:12:34.360 them have been discovered. And what is more surprising, nebucad 191 00:12:34.399 --> 00:12:39.200 Neza left hundreds of inscriptions boasting of his works, his temples, 192 00:12:39.200 --> 00:12:42.879 his walls, his palaces, and in none of them does 193 00:12:42.879 --> 00:12:46.720 he ever mention a garden. A researcher at the University 194 00:12:46.720 --> 00:12:50.639 of Oxford, Stephanie Dali has even proposed that the famous 195 00:12:50.639 --> 00:12:54.399 gardens were never in Babylon, but much farther north, in 196 00:12:54.440 --> 00:12:58.039 the Assyrian city of Nineveh, built by another king a 197 00:12:58.120 --> 00:13:01.879 century earlier, and that the Greek authors over the centuries 198 00:13:02.279 --> 00:13:06.200 confused the two cities. Does that mean Daniel didn't see 199 00:13:06.240 --> 00:13:12.159 beautiful gardens? No, Babylon was rich and surely had palaces 200 00:13:12.200 --> 00:13:15.639 with trees and water. But the postcard image of the 201 00:13:15.679 --> 00:13:19.039 hanging gardens floating over the city, the one you have 202 00:13:19.159 --> 00:13:21.879 in your head, has to be treated for what it is. 203 00:13:22.399 --> 00:13:28.799 A beautiful legend, possibly real, possibly exaggerated, possibly located somewhere else. 204 00:13:29.120 --> 00:13:31.799 And I prefer to tell you that straight than to 205 00:13:31.879 --> 00:13:34.679 paint you a pretty scene that may be never existed. 206 00:13:35.200 --> 00:13:39.120 But a city is not only its monuments. It is 207 00:13:39.480 --> 00:13:43.879 above all its daily life, what is touched and smelled 208 00:13:43.919 --> 00:13:47.159 and eaten each morning. And the material life of the 209 00:13:47.200 --> 00:13:50.600 great city had a very concrete texture, because in that 210 00:13:50.720 --> 00:13:54.879 plain between the rivers, there was no stone, no quarries, 211 00:13:55.159 --> 00:14:00.360 no nearby mountains from which to take blocks. Everything, absolutely 212 00:14:00.639 --> 00:14:03.840 everything was built with the one thing. There was plenty 213 00:14:03.879 --> 00:14:07.519 of mud, clay bricks dried in the sun for humble 214 00:14:07.559 --> 00:14:11.840 houses and bricks fired in kilns, much more resistant for 215 00:14:11.919 --> 00:14:16.080 the palaces, the temples, and the defenses. And as mortar 216 00:14:16.320 --> 00:14:20.519 in the great works, they used bitumen, that natural tar 217 00:14:20.679 --> 00:14:24.600 that seeped from the soil of Mesopotamia. The Genesis account, 218 00:14:24.639 --> 00:14:27.440 when it describes the construction of the Tower of Babele, 219 00:14:27.919 --> 00:14:31.639 says it with an astonishing precision, they used brick instead 220 00:14:31.639 --> 00:14:35.480 of stone, and bitumen instead of mortar. Whoever wrote that 221 00:14:35.840 --> 00:14:38.720 knew first hand how cities were built in that land. 222 00:14:39.600 --> 00:14:43.080 Imagine then, the color of the young captives every day 223 00:14:43.240 --> 00:14:47.879 whorled a sea of fired clay, a golden brown under 224 00:14:47.879 --> 00:14:52.679 the sun. Flat roofed houses crowded along narrow alleys, organized 225 00:14:52.720 --> 00:14:55.919 around inner courtyards, where the family lived in the cool 226 00:14:55.960 --> 00:14:59.759 of the shade and the heat, a real heat, the 227 00:14:59.759 --> 00:15:03.360 heat of the Mesopotamian plain, which in the summer months 228 00:15:03.600 --> 00:15:06.679 turns into an oven and pushes people to sleep on 229 00:15:06.799 --> 00:15:11.799 the rooftops, seeking the night air. And everywhere the gentle 230 00:15:11.879 --> 00:15:15.559 water of the canals, Because that land between the Tigris 231 00:15:15.600 --> 00:15:20.200 and the Euphrates was a marvel of hydraulic engineering, a 232 00:15:20.279 --> 00:15:23.960 network of irrigation canals that distributed the water of the 233 00:15:24.080 --> 00:15:27.759 rivers across the fields and turned a parched valley into 234 00:15:27.799 --> 00:15:31.320 one of the most fertile and richest regions of the 235 00:15:31.360 --> 00:15:35.879 ancient world. That abundance was the secret of Chaldean power. 236 00:15:36.440 --> 00:15:40.279 Whoever controls the water in that land controls the bread, 237 00:15:40.639 --> 00:15:44.759 and whoever controls the bread controls everything. And what was 238 00:15:44.799 --> 00:15:48.480 eaten in those houses, not the delicacies of the palace, 239 00:15:48.559 --> 00:15:52.360 of course, but the solid diet of the valley barley 240 00:15:52.399 --> 00:15:54.840 bred above all the king of grains in the region 241 00:15:55.440 --> 00:15:59.399 dates thousands of dates from the palms that grew everywhere, 242 00:15:59.399 --> 00:16:03.360 and that gave sugar, fruit and even a kind of syrup. 243 00:16:03.799 --> 00:16:08.600 Fish from the river and the canals, onions, garlic, leeks, lentils, sesame, 244 00:16:08.679 --> 00:16:12.480 oil for cooking, and beer, a thick barley beer drunk 245 00:16:12.519 --> 00:16:15.320 through a reed to get past the dregs, and so 246 00:16:15.519 --> 00:16:18.559 basic to daily life that work was often paid for 247 00:16:18.679 --> 00:16:21.480 with it. That was the everyday flavor of the city 248 00:16:21.720 --> 00:16:24.919 where the boy from Judah had to learn to exist. 249 00:16:25.919 --> 00:16:30.519 Clothing also marked the new world. People wore tunics of 250 00:16:30.600 --> 00:16:34.279 wool and linen, often with fringes at the edges, and 251 00:16:34.440 --> 00:16:37.480 men of a certain standing or their hair long and 252 00:16:37.519 --> 00:16:41.080 their beards groomed, curled into ringlets in the fashion of 253 00:16:41.120 --> 00:16:43.960 the court, just as we see them portrayed in the 254 00:16:44.000 --> 00:16:47.799 reliefs that have survived. To dress each morning for a 255 00:16:47.840 --> 00:16:51.919 young Hebrew official was to put on literally the appearance 256 00:16:51.919 --> 00:16:55.759 of another culture. And there was something else that was everywhere, 257 00:16:55.840 --> 00:17:06.039 and that defines that civilization. Writing Babyl wrote. It recorded everything, receipts, contracts, letters, lists, omens, prayers. 258 00:17:06.440 --> 00:17:10.279 Everything was inscribed with a stylus on clay tablets that 259 00:17:10.359 --> 00:17:14.039 were then kept by the thousands. It was a society 260 00:17:14.160 --> 00:17:19.119 obsessed with leaving record. Remember this detail because at the 261 00:17:19.279 --> 00:17:22.000 end of the story it will return, and in a 262 00:17:22.039 --> 00:17:25.599 way that raises goosebumps. And there was one day on 263 00:17:25.680 --> 00:17:29.599 the calendar, the most important of all, when that civilization 264 00:17:29.759 --> 00:17:33.720 poured itself entirely into the street, the great New Year festival, 265 00:17:34.000 --> 00:17:37.400 which in the language of the place was called the Akitou, 266 00:17:37.640 --> 00:17:41.039 and which was celebrated in spring over about twelve days. 267 00:17:41.720 --> 00:17:44.839 It was the religious heart of the entire year, and 268 00:17:44.920 --> 00:17:48.960 it mobilized the whole population. According to the ritual texts 269 00:17:49.000 --> 00:17:52.240 that have been preserved during those days, the statue of 270 00:17:52.279 --> 00:17:56.359 the god Marduk was the absolute center of everything. There 271 00:17:56.359 --> 00:18:00.880 were ceremonies, recitations of the great Babylonian poet him about 272 00:18:00.920 --> 00:18:05.519 the origin of the world, and endless sacrifices. The king 273 00:18:05.640 --> 00:18:09.839 had a central and indispensable role. The festival could not 274 00:18:09.920 --> 00:18:13.839 be celebrated without him, because it was he who, inside 275 00:18:13.839 --> 00:18:17.160 the temple took the hand of the statue of Marduk, 276 00:18:17.519 --> 00:18:21.480 and thus received year after year the confirmation of his 277 00:18:21.640 --> 00:18:25.720 right to reign. There is also a famous right which 278 00:18:25.720 --> 00:18:29.359 we know mainly from a much later ritual text from 279 00:18:29.400 --> 00:18:33.400 several centuries afterward, and which some scholars dispute whether it 280 00:18:33.519 --> 00:18:37.839 was actually practiced in this era. In it, the monarch 281 00:18:37.960 --> 00:18:41.440 was stripped of his insignia, a priest struck his face 282 00:18:41.480 --> 00:18:44.440 and pulled his ears, and the king declared before the 283 00:18:44.480 --> 00:18:48.599 God that he had not sinned against the city. However 284 00:18:48.680 --> 00:18:52.960 that detail may be, what is beyond doubt is the climax, 285 00:18:54.000 --> 00:18:58.400 an immense procession in which the statues of the divinities 286 00:18:58.480 --> 00:19:02.880 went out on parade, came down the processional way, passed 287 00:19:02.920 --> 00:19:06.480 through that ishtar gate of blue bricks, and were carried 288 00:19:06.519 --> 00:19:10.680 in triumph amid a fervent crowd to a special house 289 00:19:10.759 --> 00:19:14.119 on the outskirts now put yourself in the place of 290 00:19:14.160 --> 00:19:19.079 the boy from Judah. Every spring, year after year, for decades, 291 00:19:19.559 --> 00:19:24.160 the whole city exploded into this celebration past where he 292 00:19:24.279 --> 00:19:28.200 lived and worked, went on shoulders, the idols of the 293 00:19:28.240 --> 00:19:32.200 city amid music, shouts, and the bows of a kneeling people. 294 00:19:32.680 --> 00:19:36.400 The whole capital worshiped, the whole court bowed, and in 295 00:19:36.440 --> 00:19:39.519 the midst of that human tide, there was one man, 296 00:19:39.839 --> 00:19:42.240 and a few more like him, who did not bend 297 00:19:42.240 --> 00:19:46.240 his knee, not out of arrogance, not out of contempt, 298 00:19:46.680 --> 00:19:50.759 but because his loyalty was placed in another. That's a 299 00:19:50.880 --> 00:19:54.720 very particular kind of solitude, that of being surrounded by 300 00:19:54.880 --> 00:19:57.640 hundreds of thousands of people given over to something in 301 00:19:57.680 --> 00:20:01.519 which you, in conscience can not take part. And that 302 00:20:01.599 --> 00:20:05.480 solitude did not last a day, It lasted a whole life. This, 303 00:20:05.920 --> 00:20:09.240 all of this is what that newly arrived teenager had 304 00:20:09.279 --> 00:20:11.920 before his eyes, a city that was a blow to 305 00:20:12.000 --> 00:20:14.519 the senses and at the same time a blow to 306 00:20:14.599 --> 00:20:18.599 his faith. On every corner and within that city, the 307 00:20:18.680 --> 00:20:21.200 Empire was going to set to work on him. It 308 00:20:21.319 --> 00:20:23.880 was going to begin to take him apart. And for 309 00:20:24.000 --> 00:20:28.319 that it pulled four levers, four tools to turn a 310 00:20:28.359 --> 00:20:31.680 son of Judah into a son of Babylon. Let's look 311 00:20:31.720 --> 00:20:35.200 at them one by one, because by understanding those four 312 00:20:35.279 --> 00:20:39.480 levers you understand exactly what his life was like. The 313 00:20:39.559 --> 00:20:43.079 first lever was the most intimate of all, the name. 314 00:20:44.200 --> 00:20:46.279 To day we find it hard to feel the weight 315 00:20:46.359 --> 00:20:50.000 of this, because for us a name is almost a label. 316 00:20:50.759 --> 00:20:53.720 But in that world, the name was the soul of 317 00:20:53.799 --> 00:20:58.000 a person put into words. The name said who you were, 318 00:20:58.559 --> 00:21:02.519 whose you were, so, what God you belonged? And the 319 00:21:02.599 --> 00:21:05.160 names of those four young men of Judah were all 320 00:21:05.240 --> 00:21:09.119 four small confessions of faith listened to them. The main 321 00:21:09.240 --> 00:21:12.839 character was named Daniel, which means God is my judge. 322 00:21:13.440 --> 00:21:16.480 He carried God in his name every time someone called 323 00:21:16.519 --> 00:21:20.359 him his friend. Hanna Andiah meant something like, the Lord 324 00:21:20.480 --> 00:21:25.440 has been gracious, the Lord has shown kindness. Michael meant, 325 00:21:25.680 --> 00:21:28.880 according to the most common reading, who is like God? 326 00:21:29.480 --> 00:21:33.519 It questioned? That is really a declaration. And as Araiah meant, 327 00:21:33.880 --> 00:21:37.200 the Lord is my help, the Lord sustains me. Do 328 00:21:37.240 --> 00:21:41.319 you see the pattern. All four names ended or began 329 00:21:41.519 --> 00:21:44.839 pointing to the God of Israel. Each one was a 330 00:21:44.880 --> 00:21:47.920 seed of faith that parents had planted in their son. 331 00:21:48.720 --> 00:21:51.400 Every time those young men heard their own name. They 332 00:21:51.440 --> 00:21:54.599 heard a reminder of who truly governed them, and that 333 00:21:55.200 --> 00:21:58.759 exactly that was the first thing the empire took from them. 334 00:21:59.160 --> 00:22:01.680 The seventh verse of the first chapter records it with 335 00:22:01.759 --> 00:22:06.839 a bureaucratic coldness that's frightening. The chief of the officials says, 336 00:22:06.880 --> 00:22:11.200 the text gave them new names. Daniel, he called Beltishazar, 337 00:22:11.680 --> 00:22:18.680 Hannanaiah Shadrak, Michael Meishak, and Azariah Abdnigo. Now notice what 338 00:22:18.839 --> 00:22:21.480 really happened there, because it's brilliant and cruel at the 339 00:22:21.480 --> 00:22:24.559 same time. They did not give them just any names. 340 00:22:25.000 --> 00:22:27.400 They took four names that pointed to the god of 341 00:22:27.519 --> 00:22:30.559 Israel and replaced them with four names that pointed to 342 00:22:30.599 --> 00:22:37.200 the gods of Babylon. Beltashazar invokes the god Bell, which 343 00:22:37.279 --> 00:22:40.640 was another name for Marduk, the supreme god of the city. 344 00:22:41.359 --> 00:22:44.480 In fact, later in the fourth chapter of the book, 345 00:22:44.559 --> 00:22:48.160 in the eighth verse, nebukud Neza himself says it, without 346 00:22:48.200 --> 00:22:52.839 mincing words, they called him Beltashaza after the name of 347 00:22:52.920 --> 00:22:57.240 my god. And the name Abdnigo contains the god Nego, 348 00:22:57.880 --> 00:23:01.359 a form of the name of Nabu, the Babylonian god 349 00:23:01.400 --> 00:23:04.920 of wisdom. And of scribes, who was also the king's 350 00:23:04.960 --> 00:23:08.519 favorite god. Allow me a note of honesty, because here 351 00:23:08.559 --> 00:23:11.680 you have to be careful. The exact meaning of some 352 00:23:11.720 --> 00:23:16.279 of these Babylonian names, especially Shadrach and Mayshak, is still 353 00:23:16.319 --> 00:23:19.720 a subject of debate among the specialists. We don't know 354 00:23:19.839 --> 00:23:23.680 with total certainty what they meant, word for word, and 355 00:23:23.720 --> 00:23:27.359 whoever affirms it to you with absolute certainty is selling 356 00:23:27.400 --> 00:23:31.839 you more confidence than the evidence allows. But the general 357 00:23:31.880 --> 00:23:36.000 pattern is crystal clear, and no one disputes it. The 358 00:23:36.039 --> 00:23:39.640 Empire changed names that said the god of Israel for 359 00:23:39.799 --> 00:23:43.279 names that said the gods of Babylon. The operation was 360 00:23:43.319 --> 00:23:47.200 not administrative, it was theological. It was an attempt to 361 00:23:47.279 --> 00:23:50.359 rewrite in the very language with which those young men 362 00:23:50.400 --> 00:23:54.119 were called each day, whose they were. And then something 363 00:23:54.160 --> 00:23:56.880 happens that seems to me one of the most moving 364 00:23:56.960 --> 00:24:00.000 things in the whole account, because the book, through out 365 00:24:00.240 --> 00:24:04.680 its pages, is going to keep calling him Daniel, again 366 00:24:05.000 --> 00:24:10.440 and again and again Daniel. The text refuses, in practice 367 00:24:10.759 --> 00:24:13.880 to use the name the Empire imposed on him, as 368 00:24:13.880 --> 00:24:17.039 if the scriptures themselves were saying, they can call you 369 00:24:17.160 --> 00:24:20.240 whatever they want in their palaces, but we know what 370 00:24:20.319 --> 00:24:23.240 your name really is the name by which your God 371 00:24:23.319 --> 00:24:26.319 knows you. Think about it applied to you for a moment. 372 00:24:26.559 --> 00:24:30.200 There are names the world puts on you, labels. People 373 00:24:30.240 --> 00:24:33.839 decide who you are, classify you, assign you a role. 374 00:24:34.359 --> 00:24:37.799 But there's a name beneath all those, the true one, 375 00:24:38.200 --> 00:24:42.240 the one that really defines you. Daniel lost the name 376 00:24:42.319 --> 00:24:45.240 in the official records of the empire, he did not 377 00:24:45.400 --> 00:24:49.000 lose the name in his heart. The second lever was 378 00:24:49.079 --> 00:24:55.279 more subtle, but deeper still, Language and education. That same 379 00:24:55.359 --> 00:24:58.680 fourth verse of the first chapter, the one that describes 380 00:24:58.880 --> 00:25:01.720 which young men they will look for, also says what 381 00:25:01.759 --> 00:25:05.160 they wanted them for to teach them. It says the 382 00:25:05.279 --> 00:25:09.039 language and the literature of the Chaldeans. And they were 383 00:25:09.079 --> 00:25:12.960 to spend three full years in that training before presenting 384 00:25:13.000 --> 00:25:16.680 themselves to the king. Three years of intensive re education. 385 00:25:17.240 --> 00:25:20.279 And you have to understand what that really meant, because 386 00:25:20.319 --> 00:25:23.279 it was not a little language class The language of 387 00:25:23.319 --> 00:25:27.160 the Chaldeans was Akkadian, written in that wedge script on 388 00:25:27.240 --> 00:25:30.880 clay that we call Cuneiform, one of the oldest and 389 00:25:30.920 --> 00:25:34.599 most difficult forms of writing in human history. It did 390 00:25:34.640 --> 00:25:37.759 not have an alphabet of twenty some letters like ours. 391 00:25:38.480 --> 00:25:42.440 It had hundreds of signs, each with several possible values. 392 00:25:42.960 --> 00:25:45.759 Mastering it took years. It was the knowledge of a 393 00:25:45.839 --> 00:25:49.319 tiny elite, and the literature of the Chaldeans was not 394 00:25:49.599 --> 00:25:54.079 innocent poetry. It was the entire body of Babylonian knowledge, 395 00:25:54.440 --> 00:25:58.559 which was soaked in religion everywhere. The Chaldeans were famous 396 00:25:58.599 --> 00:26:02.160 throughout the ancient world as the great masters of observing 397 00:26:02.200 --> 00:26:06.559 the stars. They studied the sky night after night, recorded 398 00:26:06.599 --> 00:26:10.240 the movements of the planets, the eclipses, the positions of 399 00:26:10.279 --> 00:26:13.440 the stars, and from all of that they drew omens 400 00:26:13.480 --> 00:26:16.519 about the future of the king and the kingdom. They 401 00:26:16.559 --> 00:26:21.440