Yeah, I always wondered what happended to Daniel. ; If EVERYBODY had to be there where was he?
From my comment in last week's Daniel thread by ithinkisee:
This chapter of Daniel is perhaps one of the most fascinating because it reveals so much about the literary history of the book. The story concerns only Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, and Daniel is conspicuously absent (unlike all the other chapters, where he is the main figure), suggesting that prior to its inclusion in Daniel, the story about the three youths circulated outside the Daniel cycle -- just like the three youths of 1 Esdras (Zerubabbel and two other boys), another court tale. However, there is a story about Daniel and the worship of the golden image in the Greek versions of Daniel (ch. 13), which according to Collins was probably "composed in Jerusalem in the first quarter of the second century B.C.E. in circles different from those that collected the tales of Daniel 1-6" (p. 418), and in which the figure of Daniel is considerably different and probably independent of the Daniel in the MT text (e.g. in the OG, this Daniel is a "priest" and the "son of Abal"). In these versions (of the OG and Theodotion), the golden idol is called Bel. Such a story in either version (that is, either ch. 3 or 13 of Daniel) has a clear Hellenistic provenance considering the Greek vocabulary in ch. 3 and the widespread tradition in Diodorus Siculus (cf. 2.9) and Herodotus (1.83) about the existence of such a statue of Bel in Babylon in the Seleucid period, or in the preceding Persian period. Moreover, there is a separate Jewish tradition reported by Eupolemus (second century BC) which casts the story back to the reign of "Jonakhim" (i.e. "Jehoiakim"), which concerned the prophet Jeremiah who the king tried to "burn alive" after he objected to sacrifices given to "a golden idol whose name was Baal (i.e. Bel)" (cf. PE 9.39.1-5). The story of Bel in Daniel, ch. 13 (OG and Theodotion) casts the priest Daniel in the role of the prophet Jeremiah, whereas ch. 3 in the MT (and Greek versions) relates a similar punishment of burning by fire in response to a refusal of worship of a golden idol. The narrative of ch. 3, moreover, is heavily interpolated in the Greek with additional material: the Prayer of Azariah and the Song of the Three Men (cf. 3:46-50). This attests the existence of a wider cycle of stories and traditions about the "three youths" outside of what was first compiled in the Aramaic version of Daniel. The Dead Sea Scrolls include other Danielic stories and visions that are cognate to those in the MT and the Greek versions. Chapter 3 represents in a microcosm the complex literary history of the book that a simplistic consideration of the canonical text passes over.