Three Young Men in the Burning Fiery Furnace: Dec 17th

Today, the church celebrates the feast of three young men, Shadrack, Mesach and Abednego, the companions of Daniel the prophet. I missed the opportunity to comment on the due date, which was unfortunate: they are important for highlighting a much neglected group in the church - the transgendered.

We are probably all familiar with the stories of Daniel in the lion's den, and of his three companions in the burning fiery furnace. What they don't tell us in Sunday School, is that as slaves captured and taken to service in the king's court in Babylon they were almost certainly eunuchs - castrated males. This was the standard fate of slaves in the royal court, as Kathryn Ringrose has shown, and as anticipated by Isaiah:

And some of your descendants, your own flesh and blood who will be born to you, will be taken away, and they will become eunuchs in the palace of the king of Babylon.

-Isaiah 39:7

Daniel in the Lion's Den.

The story of Daniel is so well known to us, there is no need to repeat it here:  and that is exactly the problem  Like so many tales from long ago, we hear them as children with modern ears, and then never think to make the imaginative leap back into the historic conditions which completely change their significance.  So familiar are we with the sanitised "Children's Bible Stories" version, and the familiar, often soppy pictures that accompany it, we lose sight of the fact that the real story probably had sexual overtones.