Bible Trivia - 3/6/2008

Question: Whose hair grew like feathers, and nails like bird claws?

Answer: Nebuchadnezzar. (Daniel 4:33)

Comments: The Biblical Nebuchadnezzar is known to history as Nebuchadnezzar II. He was a dominant monarch who reigned from 605 BC-562 BCE. He is still revered today as an historic leader in parts of the middle east.

His portrayal in the Bible is not always flattering. In Daniel 4, while boasting over his achievements, Nebuchadnezzar is humbled by God by the loss of his sanity for seven years. He subsequently lives in the wild like an animal.

he [Nebuchadnezzar] was driven away from mankind and began eating grass like cattle, and his body was drenched with the dew of heaven until his hair had grown like eagles' feathers and his nails like birds' claws. (Daniel 4:33b, NASB)

Some scholars have claimed that the Nebuchadnezzar of Daniel is a composite character. One of the contributing figures, they assert, is Nabonidus, who was the paternal father of Belshazzar (depicted in Daniel 5). This role is assumed by Nebuchadnezzar in the Biblical text. The seven years of insanity would then correlate to Nabonidus' sojourn in Tayma in the desert. Evidence for this view is supported by some fragments from the Dead Sea Scrolls that reference Nabonidus being smitten by God with a fever for seven years of his reign while his son Belshazzar was regent.

More conservative scholars have interpreted his behavior as evidence of the madness called clinical boanthropy or alternately porphyria, in which the victim believes she is an ox.

Others have gone so far as to speculate that Nebuchadnezzar suffered from a disease known as lycanthropy (i.e, "the change of a man into a wolf"). While I certainly do not advocate this theory, I love it as it implies that Nebuchadnezzar could very well have been the inspiration for teen wolf!