Daniel in the lions' den the hero because of his reputation as a wise seer in Hebrew tradition. Chapters 2-7 are in Aramaic, and are in the clear form of a chiasm (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): The story of Daniel in the lions' den in chapter 6 is paired with the story of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego and the "fiery furnace" in Daniel 3. The parallels include the jealousy of non-Jews, an imperial edict requiring Jews to compromise their religion on pain of
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