I have a copy of a children's guide to the Bible that shows Daniel and his friends as little boys, seated at a dinner table with what looks like "veggie surprise" and arguing with their caretaker. Any other one I've found shows them as either young men, or older men - with beards.

Keep in mind that during this time, the captives that would have been sent to the King for training were to be boys of intelligence and without blemish - to paraphrase. In other words, they wanted the pretty little smart boys that were, in their eyes, as close to perfection as a boy could get. What other duties these boys performed in addition to their scholarly training is up for grabs. Literally.

It's a safe bet, from what we know of the culture of the time, that the little fellows met with a sharp knife not long after arriving at Court.

One thing that I've found is that the historical, verified facts that we have from time periods of the Bible is that many preachers and other Bible scholars don't want to believe it. Knowing a few in person, I can tell you that the discovery of The Dead Sea Scrolls really sent some of them into a tizzy!

If nothing else, the book of Daniel is a good reading exercise for Sunday School classes of kids, because eventually, one of the little angels is going to pop us and ask, "What's a 'eunuch'?" I did. It was great. I'd give anything for a picture of the look on the Minister's face when I did that!

2 Kings 20:18 (http://bible.gospelcom.net/passage/?boo ... text=verse)

And some of your descendants, your own flesh and blood, that will be born to you, will be taken away, and they will become eunuchs in the palace of the king of Babylon."

2 Kings 20:17-19 (http://bible.gospelcom.net/passage/?boo ... xt=context) (in Context) 2 Kings 20 (http://bible.gospelcom.net/passage/?boo ... xt=chapter) (Whole Chapter)

Isaiah 39:7 (http://bible.gospelcom.net/passage/?boo ... text=verse)

And some of your descendants, your own flesh and blood who will be born to you, will be taken away, and they will become eunuchs in the palace of the king of Babylon."

Isaiah 39:6-8 (http://bible.gospelcom.net/passage/?boo ... xt=context) (in Context) Isaiah 39 (http://bible.gospelcom.net/passage/?boo ... xt=chapter) (Whole Chapter)

http://www.isaiah58.com/studytools.html

Useful for pulling down those quotes.

P

Hmmm,

Could that be why we invaded Iraq?

Huh,? listen to old A-1 babble-on...

A-1

Hey, I don't see any captive Iraqi "boys without blemish" on my doorstep yet, dammit!

I know, I know, we're getting political. Slap!

Stop that.

Don't it again!

Xan I agree with you, the prophet Isaiah predicted that the desendants of king Hezekiah would be "taken up and become

Phole (imported) wrote: Thu Jan 20, 2005 9:06 pm Eunuchs in the palace of the babylonian king

" and that is exactly where Daniel finds himself. Hezekiah thought this was good because there would be "peace and security in my lifetime".

Well, we all know that if any captive Iraqi "boys without blemish" showed up on Paolo's doorstep, they would be quickly whisked inside and raised as one more of his existing menagerie of kids. Any one of them would be lucky to be so carefully cared for.

Paolo wrote: Sat Jan 22, 2005 10:05 am I have a copy of a children's guide to the Bible that shows Daniel and his friends as little boys, seated at a dinner table with what looks like "veggie surprise" and arguing with their caretaker. Any other one I've found shows them as either young men, or older men - with beards.

Keep in mind that during this time, the captives that would have been sent to the King for training were to be boys of intelligence and without blemish - to paraphrase. In other words, they wanted the pretty little smart boys that were, in their eyes, as close to perfection as a boy could get. What other duties these boys performed in addition to their scholarly training is up for grabs. Literally.

It's a safe bet, from what we know of the culture of the time, that the little fellows met with a sharp knife not long after arriving at Court.

One thing that I've found is that the historical, verified facts that we have from time periods of the Bible is that many preachers and other Bible scholars don't want to believe it. Knowing a few in person, I can tell you that the discovery of The Dead Sea Scrolls really sent some of them into a tizzy!

If nothing else, the book of Daniel is a good reading exercise for Sunday School classes of kids, because eventually, one of the little angels is going to pop us and ask, "What's a 'eunuch'?" I did. It was great. I'd give anything for a picture of the look on the Minister's face when I did that!

The "veggie surprise" is probably what the king ordered for his new little prizes to eat. But Daniel and Shadrach, Meshach, and Hebedico talked their keeper into letting them eat nothing for ten days. They believe that what the king supplied was unclean for them to eat. After ten days Daniel and the three others appeared to be in better health than the others that did eat from the supplied food. Much to the relief of the man in charge of them.

I remember reading somewhere that the Hebrew prophet Nehemiah was cup bearer to the king of Persia, and that this was a position reserved for eunuchs. Don't know if there is a tradition among Jews or Christians regarding Nehemiah's sex condition.

While the theological and historical literature on Nehemiah is rather thin, what few mentions I have found of the question as to whether or not he was a eunuch, seem to agree that he most likely was.

As noted here in a number of different threads, and included in some of the articles on the Nonfiction Board, it was standard practice in the long tradition of the Fertile Crescent for the central government to require tribute payments of young, intelligent, and physically attractive boys from subject peoples. Originally, they came during military campaigns and were from among the conquered peoples. Later, they were part of the regular tax payments to the government.

Whether these boys were castrated after arriving at the palace or before being sent from their homes seems to vary over time and place. Although, at least during the Assyrian Empire, there was an official palace office, the sole duty of which was to check to see if boys had been properly castrated before entering palace service.

As they then moved up the civil service bureaucracy, these eunuchs were generally assigned to locations far from their ancestral homes. It was thought, that as foreigners, they would be less likely to be corrupted by those whom they governed. It was thought that, as eunuchs, they would both be less likely to be corrupted by thoughts of creating a family line AND less likely to be able to socialize with the intact men whom they governed.

This style of using “incorruptible” eunuchs to govern people distant from the capital continued in the near eastern tradition up to fairly recent times. The last governor of Zanzibar for the sultan of Muscat was a eunuch. The French discovered, to their horror, in 1914 that their territories in central Africa had eunuch officials as holdovers from the previous rulers.

I have read an analysis of the cylindrical seals from the Assyrian Empire, the seals of those holding power in government. Where the owner can be identified from the seal, over half had clearly been owned by eunuchs. Since the number of seals investigated included all seals that had belonged to the kings, the number of NON-royal seals belonging to eunuchs was a sizeable majority.

Was Nehemiah a eunuch? If he existed (most theologians believe he did), the office he held demanded that he be a eunuch. He is most likely to have been castrated as a boy of 10 to 12 years of age and set to work at some task in the palace, from which he worked his way up the bureaucratic heirarchy. What is unusual about Nehemiah is that he is assigned to the home of his people, although this did come during a period when the state was trying to shore up support among some of the conquered peoples on the fringes.