"The same hour was the thing fulfilled upon Nebuchadnezzar; and he
was driven from men, and did eat grass as oxen, and his body was wet
with the dew of heaven, till his hairs were grown like eagles' feathers,
and his nails like birds' claws" (Dan. 4:33).
The king's insanity is corroborated by history. Josephus quotes from
a Babylonian historian named Berasus who mentions a strange malady
suffered by Nebuchadnezzar. There is also the testimony of Abydenus,
the Greek historian of 268 B.C.
It is possible that Nebuchadnezzar himself gives testimony concerning
this. Archaeologist Sir Henry Rawlinson has translated an excavated
inscription of the king. It reads:
"For four years the seat of my kingdom in the city ... did not rejoice
my heart. In all my dominions I did not build a high place of power;
the precious treasures of my kingdom I did not lay out in the worship
of Merodach, my lord, the joy of my heart. In Babylon the city of
my sovereignty and the seat of my empire I did not sing his praises,
and I did not furnish his altars; nor did I clear out the canals."
The form of insanity in which men think of themselves as beasts and
imitate the behavior of a beast is not without precedent. It is known
as "Insania zoanthropica".
Raymond Harrison recites a personal experience with a modern case
similar to that of Nebuchadnezzar, which he observed in a British
mental institution in 1946. Harrison writes,
"A great many doctors spend an entire, busy professional career without once
encountering an instance of the kind
of monomania described in the book of Daniel. The present writer,
therefore, considers himself particularly fortunate to have actually
observed a clinical case of zoanthropy in a British mental institution
in 1946.
The patient was in his early 20's, who reportedly had been hospitalized
for about five years. His symptoms were well developed on admission,
and diagnosis was immediate and conclusive. He was of average height
and weight with good physique, and was in excellent bodily health.
His mental symptoms included pronounced anti-social tendencies, and
because of this he spent the entire day from dawn to dusk outdoors,
in the grounds of the institution .... His daily routine consisted
of wandering around the magnificent lawns with which the otherwise
dingy hospital situation was graced, and it was his custom to pluck
up and eat handfuls of the grass as he went along.
On observation he was seen to discriminate carefully between grass
and weeds, and on inquiry from the attendant the writer was told the
diet of this patient consisted exclusively of grass from the hospital
lawns. He never ate institutional food with the other inmates, and
his only drink was water ... the writer was able to examine him cursorily,
and the only physical abnormality noted consisted of a lengthening
of the hair and a coarse, thickened condition of the finger-nails.
Without institutional care, the patient would have manifested precisely
the same physical conditions as those mentioned in Daniel 4:33 ...
from the forgoing it seems that the author of the fourth chapter of
Daniel was describing accurately an attestable, if rather rare, mental
affliction."
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