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Two satirical tales expose idol worship as fraud in the court of Babylon.

Bel and the Dragon is an Apocryphal addition to the Book of Daniel, absent from the Hebrew text of Daniel used in most Protestant Bibles, combining two satirical tales of exposed idolatry. In the first, Daniel proves to King Cyrus that the idol Bel is not truly consuming its offerings, echoing the mockery of lifeless idols found in Isaiah. Begin at Bel and the Dragon chapter 1 to read both stories.

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Bel and the Dragon is an Apocryphal addition to the Book of Daniel, included in the King James Version with Apocrypha but absent from the Hebrew text of Daniel used in most Protestant Bibles. It combines two satirical tales: in the first, Daniel proves to King Cyrus that the idol Bel is not truly consuming the offerings left for it, exposing the priests who secretly eat them; in the second, Daniel kills a dragon worshipped as a god, provoking a mob that casts him into a lions' den from which he again emerges unharmed. Read Bel and the Dragon online here, verse by verse.

In the second tale, Daniel kills a dragon worshipped as a god, provoking a mob that casts him into a lions' den from which he again emerges unharmed, a deliverance in the same vein as the rescues recounted throughout <a href="/bible/kjva/jeremiah">Jeremiah</a>'s era.