Additions to Daniel.—The “additions to Daniel” are three in number: Susannah and the Elders, Bel and the Dragon, and The Song of the Three Children. Of these the two former have no organic connexion with the text. The case is otherwise with regard to the last. In some respects it helps to fill up a gap in the canonical text between verses 23 and 24 of chapter iii. And yet we find Polychronius, early in the 5th century, stating that this song was not found in the Syriac version.
Susannah.—This addition was placed by Theodotion before chap. i., and Bel and the Dragon at its close, whereas by the Septuagint and the Vulgate it was reckoned as chap. xiii. after the twelve canonical chapters, Bel and the Dragon as xiv. Theodotion’s version is the source of the Peshitto and the Vulgate, for all three additions, and the Septuagint is the source of the Syro-Hexaplaric which has been published by Ceriani (Mon. Sacr. vii.). The legend recounts how that in the early days of the Captivity Susannah, the beautiful and pious wife of the rich Joakim, was walking in her garden and was there seen by two elders who were also judges. Inflamed with lust, they made infamous proposals to her, and when repulsed they brought against her a false charge of adultery. When brought before the tribunal she was condemned to death and was on the way to execution, when Daniel interposed and, by cross-questioning the accusers apart, convinced the people of the falsity of the charge.
The source of the story may, according to Ewald (Gesch.³ iv. 636), have been suggested by the Babylonian legend of the seduction of two old men by the goddess of love (see also Koran, Sur. ii. 96). Another and much more probable origin of the work is that given by Brüll (Das apocr. Susanna-Buch, 1877) and Ball (Speaker’s Apocr. ii. 323-331). The first half of the story is based on a tradition—originating possibly in Jer. xxix. 21-32 and found in the Talmud and Midrash—of two elders Ahab and Zedekiah, who in the Captivity led certain women astray under the delusion that they should thereby become the mother of the Messiah. But the most interesting part of the investigation is concerned with the latter half of the story, which deals with the trial. The characteristics of this section point to its composition about 100-90 B.C., when Simon ben Shetaḥ was president of the Sanhedrin. Its object was to support the attempts of the Pharisees to bring about a reform in the administration of the law courts. According to Sadducean principles the man who was convicted of falsely accusing another of a capital offence was not put to death unless his victim was already executed. The Pharisees held that the intention of the accusers was equivalent to murder. Our apocryph upholds the Pharisaic contention. As Simon ben Shetaḥ insisted on a rigorous examination of the witnesses, so does our writer: as he and his party required that the perjurer should suffer the same penalty he sought to inflict on another, so our writer represents the death penalty as inflicted on the perjured elders.
The language was in all probability Semitic-Hebrew or Aramaic. The paronomasiae in the Greek in verses 54-55 (ὑπὸ σχῖνον ... σχίσει) and 58-59 (ὑπὸ πρῖνον ... πρίσει) present no cogent difficulty against this view; for they may be accidental and have arisen for the first time in the translation. But as Brüll and Ball have shown (see Speaker’s Apocr. ii. 324), the same paronomasiae are possible either in Hebrew or Aramaic.
Literature.—Ball in the Speaker’s Apocr. ii. 233 sqq.; Schürer, Gesch.³ iii. 333; Rothstein in Kautzsch’s Apocr. u. Pseud. i. 176 sqq.; Kamphausen in Ency. Bib.; Marshall in Hastings’ Bible Dict.; Toy in the Jewish Encyc.
Bel and the Dragon.—We have here two independent narratives, in both of which Daniel appears as the destroyer of heathenism. The latter had a much wider circulation than the former, and is most probably a Judaized form of the old Semitic myth of the destruction of the old dragon, which represents primeval chaos (see Ball, Speaker’s Apocr. ii. 346-348; Gunkel, Schöpfung und Chaos, 320-323). Marduk destroys Tiamat in a similar manner to that in which Daniel destroys the dragon (Delitzsch, Das babylonische Weltschöpfung Epos), by driving a storm-wind into the dragon which rends it asunder. Marshall (Hastings’ Bib. Dict. i. 267) suggests that the “pitch” of the Greek (Aramaic זיפא) arose from the original term for storm-wind (זעפא).
The Greek exists in two recensions, those of the Septuagint and Theodotion. Most scholars maintain a Greek original, but this is by no means certain. Marshall (Hastings’ Bib Dict. i. 268) argues for an Aramaic, and regards Gasters’s Aramaic text [Proceedings of the Society of Biblical Archaeology (1894), pp. 280-290, 312-317; (1895) 75-94] as of primary value in this respect, but this is doubtful.
Literature.—Fritzsche’s Handbuch zu den Apoc.; Ball in the Speaker’s Apocr. ii. 344 sqq.; Schürer,³ Gesch. iii. 332 sqq.; and the articles in the Ency. Bibl., Bible Dict., and Jewish Encyc.
The Greek text is best given in Swete iii., and the Syriac will be found in Walton’s Polyglot, Lagarde and Neubauer’s Tobit.