Surprising facts about Daniel's sexuality by Messianic Rabbi Dr Les Aron Gosling

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The prophet Daniel was a great man of God. In fact, he was considered by God to be only one of three men (up to the Axial Period of world history) whose lives were characterised by righteousness and holiness. Daniel is linked to Noah and Job. Please note this intriguing statement below which is located in Ezekiel's writings and notice that Daniel (along with Noah and Job) are contrasted by God in relation to the depraved society that the Lord was, at that time, condemning.    

"The word of the LORD came again to me, saying, Human being, when the land sins against me by trespassing grievously, then will I stretch out my hand upon it, and will break the staff of the bread thereof, and will send famine upon it, and will exterminate man and animal from it: Though these three men, Noah, Daniel, and Job, were in it, they should deliver but their own lives by their righteousness, says the Lord GOD. If I cause noisome creatures to pass through the land, and they spoil it, so that it be desolate, that no man may pass through because of the creatures: Though these three men were in it, as I live, says the Lord GOD, they shall deliver neither sons nor daughters; they only shall be delivered, but the land shall be desolate. Or if I bring a sword upon that land, and say, Sword, go through the land; so that I exterminate man and animal from it: Though these three men were in it, as I live, says the Lord GOD, they shall deliver neither sons nor daughters, but they only shall be delivered themselves. Or if I send a pestilence into that land, and pour out my fury upon it in blood, to cut off from it man and animal: Though Noah, Daniel, and Job, were in it, as I live, says the Lord GOD, they shall deliver neither son nor daughter; they shall but deliver their own souls by their righteousness" (Eze 14.12-20).

FOUR times God declares that Daniel was RIGHTEOUS in his devotion to God's expectations of human beings as revealed in the Torah! It is the Torah which defines sin (1 Jn 3.4) and it is the Torah which defines "righteousness" -- Ps 119.172 tells us that this is so. "All your commandments are righteousness." Rav Shaul as an interpreter of the Torah for the Gentiles agrees: "Wherefore the Torah is holy, and the commandment holy, and just, and good" (Rom 7.12).

In the Torah itself we read: "Behold, I have taught you statutes and judgments, even as the LORD my God commanded me that you should do so in the land whither you go to possess it. Keep therefore and do them; for this is your wisdom and your understanding in the sight of the nations, which shall hear all these statutes, and say, surely this great nation is a wise and understanding people. For what nation is there so great, who has God so near to them, as the LORD our God is in all things concerning that for which we call upon him? And what nation is there so great, that has statutes and judgments so righteous as all this Torah, which I set before you this day?" (Deut 4.5-8).

Also in the writings of Ezekiel (who was contemporary with Daniel) there is a further mention of the prophet of God.

"The word of the LORD came again unto me, saying, Human being, say unto the prince of Tyre: Thus says the Lord GOD; Because your heart is elevated, and you have said, I am a God, I sit in the seat of God, in the midst of the seas; yet you are a man, and not God, though you set your heart as the heart of God: Behold, you are wiser than Daniel; there is no secret that they can hide from you" (Eze 28.3).

Daniel was clearly a "wise" man. God said so. Who are we to argue with the Most High God?

 YET...in the Hebrew Scriptures Daniel is not included among writings of the "Prophets" (Neviim) -- whether Major Prophets or Minor Prophets. Rather, he is located in the "Writings" (K'tuvim: generally classified as the "women's" section of the Bible). And why is this the case? This fact of Daniel's exclusion has caused much perplexity as far as scholars are concerned. But we can know the answer!

There are four reasons why Daniel is found in the feminine-oriented "Writings" division of the sacred Scriptures.

Firstly, while he was not called a prophet he was recognised as a "Seer" or "Wise Man." Only those writings by people called "prophets" are included in the second division of the Bible. Yes, we all recognise that Daniel was indeed a prophet -- and a great prophet of God, at that -- but he is not called a "prophet." There was a rabbinic antagonism directed toward his person, and this must be grasped if we are to appreciate the reasons for his exclusion from the biblical division of the Neviim.

Secondly, the character of the scroll is much different to that of books penned by other prophets as one can tell even upon a surface scan of the volume. Its character better suits the third division.

Thirdly, Daniel was a government official, and the Spirit-inspired Writings of personages who were of legal standing in the community of Israel -- Kings, priests, scribes etc -- were located in the third division. David was a prophet as pointed out in Acts 2.29,30 but his Psalms (which are highly prophetic in nature) are also located in this third division. David, you see, although he was a prophet, was also a King.

Fourthly, and possibly most importantly, was the fact that -- in Jewish thoughtform -- the author and the book he wrote were to be considered inseparable; they were not to be differentiated.

Hence the volume penned was considered to be the person himself.

I must now be entirely responsible as a Teacher and point out that Daniel was a eunuch and thus prohibited from entering the Temple (Deut 23.1); his prophetic volume comprised predictions relating to Gentile kings and kingdoms; their rise, their conquests and their eventual collapse. His scroll included references to Gentile persecution of the people of Israel. Like a eunuch, no heathen Gentile could enter the sacred precincts of the Temple of God. They were equally excluded along with castrated males. This is a main reason WHY all three volumes of the last division ("Writings") of the sacred Scriptures, namely Ezra/Nehemiah (considered one volume), Chronicles -- a genealogical work -- and Daniel, were not permitted to be placed within the library of the Temple itself and had to be preserved at the official walled-village of the Sanhedrin, Bethphage. This place was found "outside the camp" on the Mount Olivet, the extension of the Temple precincts.  (Flavius Josephus apparently disagreed with the decision to canonise Daniel in the "Writings" section of holy Scripture. He placed him squarely in the second division!)

Despite the fact we actually know nothing of Daniel's immediate genealogy (other than that he was of the Royal Jewish line), nothing about his age (except that he was a "boy" or "lad" when he was carried away captive to Babylon), and absolutely nothing of his death, the events contained in the book of Daniel span to around the third year of Koresh (Cyrus) 536 BCE which would cover a period of 70 years. Scholars are in agreement that Daniel himself may well have lived on to circa 530 BCE. He does not speak of himself in the first person until chapter 7. In the first person, "Daniel" is located repeatedly in the latter portion of the scroll (Dan 7.2,15,28; 8.1,15,27; 9.2,22; 10.2,7,11,12; 12.5).

Now again, I must return to the emphasis that Daniel happened to be a man explicitly disqualified by the statements of the Torah from ever entering the sacred precincts of the Temple of God. He was forbidden to do so, as we have seen, because he was a eunuch (Deut 23.1). How he became a eunuch we have no way of knowing. But Daniel also found himself among a number of royal captives spared by Nebuchadnezzar and taken as prisoners to the city of Babylon, on the Euphrates. The prophet records that he was placed in the care of a gay court official by the name of Ashpenaz who was "the master of the eunuchs" (Dan 1.3,7). It is a well-attested fact of history that eunuchs were essentially "gay" having been castrated and thus lacking a proper production of the male hormone, testosterone. Of course, I have used the word "essentially" and not "exclusively" as far as "sexual orientation" is concerned. In the Roman empire (1st century CE to 3rd century CE) eunuchs were nothing more than the sexual playthings of Roman emperors and soldiers. In contrast, Chinese eunuchs often became administrators of dynasties and also were pressured into heterosexual marriages, and in the Ottoman empire they managed Government affairs (as in ancient Babylon). Authorities on the subject, however, inform us that the sexual orientation of the castrated male was basically homosexual. There is no castigation biblically leveled at eunuchs, and they were seen to be primarily talented and gifted people -- have we glossed over the mention in Genesis of a eunuch in the court of Pharaoh when Joseph was rising to power? He is mentioned as holding the office of "chief chamberlain."

Having said all that, let me now share this insight from the writings of Daniel himself. While it will prove to be entirely unpopular with some, Daniel admits that he was brought "into favour and tender love with the prince of the eunuchs" in Nebuchadnezzar's palace (Dan 1.3,4,6,7,9). Best estimates have his age at this time as around 14 or 15 years old. Certainly, age 17 would be tops.
While in the gentle care of Ashpenaz, "the chief of the eunuchs," Daniel was educated in the language and learning of the "Chaldeans." The expression includes the professors of divination, magic, and astrology in Babylon (Dan 1.3,4). He was given the new name of Baltassar (Babyl. Bal�tsu-usur, "Bel protect his life"). In no way did Daniel refuse this pagan name, even with its idolatrous meaning. Daniel was most accommodating (well, up to a point). Certainly, Daniel and his companions were to be educated in the ways of the Babylonians extending over a period of three years (Dan 1.5). They were all to be fed a special diet from the king's own banquet table consisting of specialised meals which were designed to make them nicely plump in appearance (Dan 1.5) -- for obvious reasons. Notice that it was after the three years when they would approach the king. They had to be to his definite "liking."

Now stop and think for a moment about the situation in which Daniel found himself. Here was a young boy, not more than a youth, who suffered the trauma of national invasion of his homeland, saw his family butchered before his eyes, was probably castrated by violent pagan soldiers, taken away as a prisoner to an unknown and uncertain future, conscripted to become a slave in Nebuchadnezzar's palace because of his good looks and condemned to live among the idolatrous heathen for whom every Jew had contempt. He could not be blamed by any of us if he occasionally displayed some rancour toward his negative situation, and even perhaps toward God Himself who (after all) had permitted such a terrible thing to occur. But instead, Daniel maintained and exhibited time and time again an explicitly confident faith in God and an affirmative view of life, what we would refer today as being a positive mental attitude.

Whatever the relationship was that existed between Daniel and the Master of the Eunuchs, Ashpenaz, Daniel himself uses the Hebrew term chesed v'rachamim. All agree that chesed is "mercy." V'rachamim is a plural form utilised to emphasize its relative importance. It, like so many words in Hebrew, can have multiple meanings. Among other things, it can also mean "mercy" and it can also mean "physical [marital] love." I very much personally doubt that Daniel was intending to tell us that he was shown "mercy and mercy" by Ashpenaz! Rather, the humble prophet of God was shown mercy by Ashpenaz and he engaged in physical love with the handsome Jewish youth.
Allow me to clarify a major misunderstanding that people have as it pertains to eunuchs. Until the publication of the Thousand Nights and a Night by the explorer and adventurer Sir Richard Burton (1885) it was assumed that the wives collected in an Arabian harem were in good hands if under the watchful eye of a eunuch. It was thought that the eunuch was trusted with the many wives of a sheik precisely because intercourse need not be feared. Well, such was the common belief. Burton revealed the truth of the matter in explicit language which left nothing to the imagination. The truth is that the (usually) neglected women of a harem were in good hands (from their point of view) for when one considers that pregnancy was impossible sexual intercourse was not. This, of course, depended on the timing of the castration of the eunuch. If castration occurred in boyhood or around puberty, such a eunuch did not lose his sexual drive and the ability to gain an erection. This may surprise some people but it is very much the truth. It would not have been difficult for Ashpenaz and Daniel to have been lovers as it is recorded that Daniel was a very young man when he was castrated.

As unacceptable as this might first seem to be to Christian ears, we must understand that through this relationship Daniel learned to survive in the palatial court of one of the most brutal despots of the ancient world -- Nebuchadnezzar -- the Saddam Hussein of the Axial Period who changed the world forever. Intriguingly, the KJV reference to "tender love" would appear to be the closest to the truth concerning the loving relationship that existed between the two men.

And, as its context plainly reveals, we must not overlook the fact that God Himself brought the relationship into existence for Daniel's very survival.

Rebbe
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