Seven degrees up, please

July 1, 2013 7:42 AM

On the book of Daniel chapter 3 -- when his friends were to be burnt on the fiery furnace -- Nabuchadnezzar commanded to have the furnace heated seven times hotter. Since at the time they didn't have a convenient dial to turn seven degrees up, what did they do to raise the temperature?

Sorry if it's a dumb question, I completely ignore how furnaces work.

posted by jgwong to Religion & Philosophy (11 answers total)

Best answer: Add fuel and pump the bellows more vigorously.
posted by exogenous at 7:45 AM on July 1, 2013 [1 favorite]

Just adding that there is really no such thing as making something seven times hotter, unless you're measuring from absolute zero, which I'm sure they weren't.
posted by empath at 7:48 AM on July 1, 2013 [3 favorites]

While I am not a Biblical scholar, nor an expert on furnaces, I think this was possibly an example of a maniacal despot barking impossible orders - e.g. "Bring me EVERY VIRGIN IN THE KINGDOM!" ("Oh, sure, whatever you say, Nebuchadnezzar..."); "Now do [random act] A MILLION TIMES!" ("Uh, sure, I'll get right on that, Nebuchadnezzar").
posted by julthumbscrew at 7:56 AM on July 1, 2013 [7 favorites]

Best answer: In the Bible, the number seven often functions symbolically to mean "the most possible." I think this is probably not intended to denote a precise measurement, but is saying that they maxed it out. "How much heat?" "Seven, man. All the heat."
posted by Pater Aletheias at 8:00 AM on July 1, 2013 [37 favorites]

Best answer: My understanding (from learning a non-literal interpretation of the bible) is that seven was both a word used in a figurative sense and a number used in a literal sense to indicate completeness.

So on preview, yes, it's like cranking it up to eleven.
posted by Gingersnap at 8:02 AM on July 1, 2013 [7 favorites]

Best answer: You can tell the general temperature of a piece of hot steel using this scale.
posted by The 10th Regiment of Foot at 8:45 AM on July 1, 2013

To add to what is said about "seven" being a common way of saying "to the utmost". There is an Amarna Letter--dating to much earlier than Daniel--which takes it even further:

To the King my lord, my sun, my god, the breath of my life... your slave and dust under your feet. At the feet of the King my lord, my sun, my god, the breath of my life, I bowed down seven times seven times. I heard the words of the tablets of the King my lord, my sun, my god, the breath of my life, and the heat of your slave and the dust under the feet of the King, my lord, my sun, my god, the breath of my life, is exceeding glad that the breath of the King my lord, my sun, my god has gone out to his slave and to the dust under his feet.

Who is your servant but a dog? and they prostrate themselves before the Pharaoh seven times and seven times on both back and belly.

posted by Jehan at 10:18 AM on July 1, 2013 [1 favorite]

You're asking for a reasoned answer to a speculative situation related in a primitive language with debatable semantics. It's akin to asking how angry aliens make their spacecraft go straight up and the probable answers are similar.... as in "No one living knows" or "What aliens?".

If they had no measurement technique to quantify heat, these mythical dweebs might have laid on a lot more fuel and subjectively assessed it. (I can stand and count to 10 at distance X, 2X, 3X, 4x....7X for fires of varying intensity.... or I can get within X/7 distance before having to retreat from some standard distance X, not accounting for the non-linearity of point sources of radiation as radius increases.) The ancient Arabs would have had an easier time of this, I think. They were smarter and had more numbers than 7.

Anyway, my approach would yield the beginnings of the first consistent recipe for roasted unicorn, so I hereby declare it true.
posted by FauxScot at 10:52 AM on July 1, 2013

Response by poster: Actually, I asked "what did they do to raise the temperature?"
posted by jgwong at 11:06 AM on July 1, 2013 [7 favorites]

Best answer: Add more fuel. Add more oxygen (vents, pumping bellows, etc.).
posted by introp at 11:27 AM on July 1, 2013 [1 favorite]

True dat, jgwong. That's exactly what you asked. It just seemed related to measurement, which is (to me, at least) a much more interesting speculation than the completely obvious correct answer, which is to increase the rate of fuel consumption, holding all other variables constant.
posted by FauxScot at 11:12 AM on July 2, 2013