(continued from previous scroll)
This surprised me. I sat beside him on the bench, adjusting my tablet and stylus.
“I am called Nabu-shumu-ukin, of the House of Iddin-Nabu. I am in my third year at the scriptorium. I study the writings and the movements of the heavens.”
His brow lifted, faintly amused. “Then you chase the stars. And yet today, you seek one whose wisdom comes from a place no star can show.”
I flushed. “I once served Marduk. I recited the rites; I watched the omens. But his silence is heavy. Yours—your God—is not silent.”
“No,” Daniel said. “He is not. And He is not mine only.”
He turned his gaze toward the fig trees. “What do you hope to find in me?”
“Truth. Meaning. Perhaps—peace.”
“Then let us begin.”
What followed was not a lecture. Nor a performance.
Daniel spoke plainly, though his voice carried the strength of one long practiced in the art of counsel. He spoke of Jerusalem—not as a name from a map, but as a place of memory. Of temple courts burning. Of the panic of exile. Of the march across the western deserts, not as a pilgrim but as a prize taken by a king.
He told of how his name was taken from him, replaced with one meant to honor the gods of his captors. Of the education they forced upon him—the laws, the stars, the omen texts. Of new food, new language, new rules.
“But not,” he said quietly, “a new God.”
He looked at me, not accusingly, but as one testing a foundation. “They taught us the stars, the numbers, the tongues of Chaldea. But even in Babylon, the God of our fathers did not sleep.”
I scribbled every word with precision, feeling the grooves of my stylus cut into the wax. The heat of the day had begun to rise, and a soft drone of insects pulsed from the garden hedges.
Daniel continued. “The king believed knowledge could change loyalty. That by teaching us his wisdom, we would forget our own. But wisdom is not allegiance. And allegiance is not so easily broken.”
“But fear is a powerful tool,” I said.
Daniel smiled faintly. “I feared. We all did. But I feared God more.”
“Did your companions fear too?”
“They did. But their fear did not master them. It guided them to truth.”
He did not elaborate. Nor did he need to.
When the sun stood near its zenith, he concluded with a simple phrase: “That is enough for today.”
I bowed, rose, and left the courtyard with a strange sense of disquiet—not from fear, but from the realization that I had only begun to understand how little I understood.