Tannin and the Prophet Daniel

A retelling of how the prophet Daniel proved that the dragon worshipped in Babylon was no god.

Many, many years ago, several centuries before the birth of Christ, in the rich and pagan city of Babylon, there lived a young exile from Jerusalem named Daniel. The King of the Babylonians, Nebuchadnezzar, held the young man in high esteem because of his wisdom, and he often invited him to his table. Daniel knew how to interpret dreams and his prophecies were always fulfilled, which is why Nebuchadnezzar felt obliged to ask his advice. However, the prophet, who came from the tribe of Judah, was not able to convince the powerful monarch that the stone and metal idols which the Babylonians worshipped were false.

The tale

At that time, in the city of Babylon, there lived a dragon called Tannin who was worshipped as a god.

Tannin, who had made a pact of friendship and goodwill with the Babylonians, lived in the temple of Bel, where there were priests and servants to take care of his needs and where Nebuchadnezzar himself often visited him, for he was an ancient and wise dragon.

One day, when Daniel had demonstrated to the Babylonian monarch the falsity of the god Bel, Nebuchadnezzar asked him angrily:

"And why don't you worship the dragon god? You cannot deny that the dragon is alive. He is not made of stone or metal like the other gods in this land."

"He is alive but he is not a god, for he can die and gods do not die," replied the prophet.

"He has been alive since the time when my father and his father were young, and even long before. He has lived in the temple for countless generations of men, and there is nobody who remembers when he was born. He eats and drinks and speaks with wisdom, and he is very knowledgeable. I do not imagine or believe that he will ever die. He is without a doubt a god," retorted Nebuchadnezzar.

Daniel then wanted to demonstrate to the King that the dragon could die and was therefore no different from other creatures. He made cakes of pitch and sheep's fat and wool, and gave them to the poor, trusting Tannin, who, accustomed to being given food by men, did not suspect anything and ate them.

The poisoned cakes soon began to work and the dragon died in two days. Thus the king of the Babylonians was convinced that Tannin was mortal, and he lost his wise dragon god forever.

The biblical source: Bel and the Dragon

This tale is a retelling of a short story called Bel and the Dragon, one of the "Additions to Daniel" found in the ancient Greek versions of the Bible but not in the Hebrew text. In Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Bibles it is chapter 14 of the Book of Daniel. Protestant Bibles place it among the Apocrypha or leave it out, and it is not part of the Jewish scriptures. Scholars generally think it was written by a Jewish author in the last few centuries BC. It survives in two Greek versions: the older Septuagint text and a later version attributed to Theodotion, which became the standard one.

The biblical story has two parts. In the first, the king believes the idol Bel is alive because the food left before it each night disappears. Daniel scatters ashes on the temple floor, and in the morning the footprints of the priests and their families show that they have been sneaking in through a secret door to eat the offerings. Because Daniel solves the mystery with physical evidence, the episode is sometimes called one of the earliest detective stories.

The second part is the dragon. The king points out that this god, at least, is clearly alive, since it eats and drinks. Daniel says he can kill it without sword or club. He boils pitch, fat, and hair together into cakes and feeds them to the dragon, which bursts open. Daniel then invites the king to look at the thing he has been worshipping.

How the retelling differs

The version on this page changes several details. In the Theodotion text, the king is Cyrus of Persia, who conquered Babylon in 539 BC, not Nebuchadnezzar, although Nebuchadnezzar is Daniel's king in the earlier chapters of the book. The biblical dragon has no name and does not speak. The name Tannin given to it here comes from the Hebrew word for a dragon or sea monster (see below). The cakes are made with hair rather than wool, and the dragon bursts at once instead of dying after two days.

What happened next

In the biblical story, the death of their dragon god enrages the Babylonians. They accuse the king of becoming a Jew and demand that he hand Daniel over. Daniel is thrown into a den of seven lions for six days. Far away in Judea, the prophet Habakkuk is cooking a meal for reapers when an angel lifts him by the hair and carries him to Babylon to feed Daniel. On the seventh day the king finds Daniel alive and unharmed, praises Daniel's God, and throws his enemies to the lions instead. This is a separate, second lions' den story from the more famous one in Daniel chapter 6.

What does tannin mean?

The Hebrew word tannin (plural tanninim) means a serpent, dragon, or great sea monster, and it appears many times in the Hebrew Bible. In Genesis 1, God creates the great tanninim of the sea. In Exodus 7, Aaron's staff turns into a tannin before Pharaoh. Isaiah 27:1 promises that God will slay Leviathan and "the dragon that is in the sea," and Psalm 74 speaks of God breaking the heads of the dragons in the waters. The prophet Ezekiel calls Pharaoh a great dragon lying in the Nile, and Jeremiah 51:34 compares Nebuchadnezzar to a dragon that has swallowed Jerusalem. A related name, Tunnanu, appears in the much older Canaanite poems found at Ugarit as one of the sea monsters defeated by the gods. You can read more on our page on dragons in the Bible.

Babylonian background

Bel, meaning "lord," was a title of Marduk, the chief god of Babylon. In the Babylonian creation epic, the Enuma Elish, Marduk defeats the sea dragon Tiamat by driving winds into her open mouth until her body swells, then splitting her apart. Some scholars, beginning with the German Bible scholar Hermann Gunkel in the 1890s, have suggested that Daniel's dragon, which bursts after swallowing his cakes, is a mocking echo of that myth. Dragons really were sacred in Babylon: the walls of the Ishtar Gate, built under Nebuchadnezzar II, are covered with images of the mušḫuššu, the scaly, long-necked dragon of Marduk. There is, however, no evidence that the Babylonians kept a living dragon or serpent in a temple.

Meaning

The story is a satire of idol worship. The Bel episode shows that a statue cannot eat, and the dragon episode shows that even a living creature is not a god, because it can die. Both stories make the same point as the rest of the Book of Daniel: that the God of Israel is greater than the gods and kings of Babylon. Unlike most dragon-slayers, such as Saint George, Daniel wins with cleverness, not weapons.

Frequently asked questions

Is Bel and the Dragon in the Bible?

It is in Catholic and Orthodox Bibles as Daniel 14. Protestant Bibles list it among the Apocrypha, and it is not in the Hebrew Bible.

How did Daniel kill the dragon?

He fed it cakes made of pitch, fat, and hair boiled together, and the dragon burst open.

What is a tannin in the Bible?

Tannin is a Hebrew word for a serpent, dragon, or sea monster. It is used for creatures of the deep and as a symbol of God's enemies.

Sources and Further Reading

• “Bel and the Dragon,” in The New Oxford Annotated Apocrypha, New Revised Standard Version, ed. Michael D. Coogan et al., 3rd ed. (Oxford University Press, 2001).
• Myths from Mesopotamia: Creation, the Flood, Gilgamesh, and Others, trans. Stephanie Dalley (Oxford University Press, 1989).
• Ciruelo, The Book of the Dragon, text by Montse Sant, trans. Ros Schwartz (Paper Tiger, 1992).
• Carey A. Moore, Daniel, Esther, and Jeremiah: The Additions, Anchor Bible 44 (Doubleday, 1977).
• John J. Collins, Daniel: A Commentary on the Book of Daniel, Hermeneia (Fortress Press, 1993).
• Hermann Gunkel, Creation and Chaos in the Primeval Era and the Eschaton, trans. K. William Whitney Jr. (Eerdmans, 2006).
• John Day, God’s Conflict with the Dragon and the Sea: Echoes of a Canaanite Myth in the Old Testament (Cambridge University Press, 1985).