Texts in Conversation
Daniel is described being thrown to the lions but survives because God closed their mouths. The Acts of Paul and Thecla echoes this where Thecla faces wild beasts in the arena, but none touch her, and she calls herself a servant of the living God.
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2500 BCE
1000+ CE
Daniel 6:16-23
Hebrew Bible
18 Then the king departed to his palace. But he spent the night without eating, and no diversions were brought to him. He was unable to sleep. 19 In the morning, at the earliest sign of daylight, the king got up and rushed to the lions’ den. 20 As he approached the den, he called out to Daniel in a worried voice, “Daniel, servant of the living God, was your God whom you continually serve able to rescue you from the lions?” 21 Then Daniel spoke to the king, “O king, live forever! 22 My God sent his angel and closed the lions’ mouths so that they have not harmed me because I was found to be innocent before him. Nor have I done any harm to you, O king.”
Acts of Paul and Thecla 33
Paul and Thecla
Early Christian
37 And the governor called Thecla from among the beasts, and said to her: Who art thou? and what hast thou about thee that not one of the beasts hath touched thee? But she said: I am the handmaid of the living God; and what I have about me-it is that I have believed on that his Son in whom God is well pleased; for whose sake not one of the beasts hath touched me. For he alone is the goal (or way) of salvation and the substance of life immortal; for unto them that are tossed about he is a refuge, unto the oppressed relief, unto the despairing shelter, and in a word, whosoever believeth not on him, shall not live, but die everlastingly.
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Notes and References
... It is God's act that the story relates, not Daniel's or the lions'. We are told nothing of what actually happened in the lion pit. There is a contrast between the restraint of Daniel's story and the extravagance of (e.g.) the second century A.D. Acts of Paul and Thecla 8–9 (see E. Hennecke, New Testament Apocrypha vol. 2). ...
* The use of references are not endorsements of their contents. Please read the entirety of the provided reference(s) to understand the author's full intentions regarding the use of these texts.
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