MATTHIAS, was born in Hungary, and became a Lutheran minister at Prefburg, and historiographer to the emperor Charles VI. He wrote, among other works, a History of Hungary, which was so much admired, that the emperor sent him letters of nobility; and notwithstanding his being a Lutheran, the Pope, in 1736, sent him his picture, and many large gold medals. He was a member of the Royal Society of London, and of the academies of Berlin and Petersburg; and died in 1749, at 66 years of age.

or Belus, the supreme god of the ancient Chaldeans or Babylonians. He was the founder of the Babylonian empire; and is supposed to be the Nimrod of Scripture, and the same as the Phoenician Baal. This god had a temple erected to him in the city of Babylon, on the very uppermost range of the famous tower of Babel, or Babylon, wherein were many statues of this deity; and one, among the rest, of massy gold, 40 feet high. The whole furniture of this magnificent temple was of the same metal and valued at 800 talents of gold.—This temple, with its riches, was in being till the time of Xerxes, who, returning from his unfortunate expedition into Greece, demolished it, and carried off the immense wealth which it contained. It was the statue of this god which Nebuchadnezzar, being returned to Babylon after the end of the Jewish war, set up and dedicated in the plain of Dura; the story of which is related at large in the third chapter of Daniel.

BEL and the Dragon, the history of; an apocryphal and uncannonial book of Scripture. It was always rejected by the Jewish church, and is extant neither in the Hebrew nor the Chaldee language, nor is there any proof that it ever was so. St Jerome gives it no better title than the Fable of Bel and the Dragon. It is however permitted to be read, as well as the other apocryphal writings, for instruction and the improvement of manners.