The Rosenbergs meet Nebuchadnezzar: The narrator's use of the Bible in Doctorow's The 'Book of Daniel'

[…] it is instructive to pause for a moment over the career of Daniel, a definitely minor, if not totally apocryphal figure (or figures) who worked with no particular delight for a few of the kings in the post-Alexandrine Empires. It is a bad time for Daniel and his co-religionists, for they are second-class citizens, in a distinctly hostile environment. But in that peculiar kind of symbiosis of pagan kings and wise subject-Jews, Daniel is apparently able to soften the worst excesses of the rulers against his people by making himself available for interpretations of dreams, visions or apparitions in the night. […] Daniel seems to be a modest man, brave, and more faithful to God than wise, for it is by means of prayer and piety that he learns from God the dream interpretations he must make to the King in order to survive. (The Book of Daniel 11) © 1999 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.