Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego of a letter from king Nebuchadnezzar. Chapter 3 is unique in that Daniel does not appear in it. Daniel 3 forms part of a chiasmus (a poetic structure in which the main point or message of a passage is placed in the centre and framed by further repetitions on either side) within Daniel 2-7, paired with Daniel 6, the story of Daniel in the lions' den: Chapters 3 and 6 contain significant differences, however. The story of the fiery furnace does not include Daniel, while the story of the lions' den does not include Daniel's friends; the first story takes
Old Testament account for the many different Old Testaments which exist today. Timothy H. Lim, a professor of Hebrew Bible and Second Temple Judaism at the University of Edinburgh, identifies the Old Testament as "a collection of authoritative texts of apparently divine origin that went through a human process of writing and editing." He states that it is not a magical book, nor was it literally written by God and passed to mankind. By about the 5th century BC Jews saw the five books of the Torah (the Old Testament Pentateuch) as having authoritative status; by the 2nd century BC the Prophets