What did Daniel's faith in God protect him from?

In the Book of Daniel, his friends, Shadrach, Meshach and Abed-nego, were thrown in a fiery furnace but protected by their faith in God. Much later, Daniel was thrown in a den of lions, but was protected from the lions by his faith in God. According to Leonard J Greenspoon, in 'Between Alexandria and Antioch: Jews and Judaism in the Hellenistic Period', the authors were not writing history and were aware that these things never happened and that these individuals never lived, and their audiences had the same knowledge.

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