Archive | August, 2019

More enchanted lions – this time, enchanted on behalf of the Biblical prophet Daniel (“Testament: The Bible in Animation,” 1996). This one has an interesting modern-day framing device that poses questions about the desirability and limits of Jewish assimilation into Gentile society:

This animated version also ends with Daniel pleading for clemency toward those who had accused him, and for “mercy and forgiveness for all, and deliverance for all people everywhere” – though whether this plea is granted or refused goes unmentioned. By contrast, in the original Biblical story, “the king commanded, and they brought those men which had accused Daniel, and they cast them into the den of lions, them, their children, and their wives; and the lions had the mastery of them, and brake all their bones in pieces” – and Daniel raises not a peep of protest.

Incidentally, while I’ve been calling this Russian-Welsh series of animated versions of classic stories the “Middelboe Chronicles,” from the involvement of Penélope Middelboe as one of the main people behind the series, I notice that her name is often paired with that of Martin Lamb, to an extent that suggests that these should really be called the “Lamb-Middelboe Chronicles.”

However, it’s too late to change it now; for the law of the Medes and Persians is, That no decree nor statute which the king establisheth may be changed.