The indications of a Semitic original give this fragment, in that respect, a middle place between the other two. Less numerous than in the Song of the Three, they are more so than in the History of Susanna, though this is a shorter piece than that.
The non-discovery by Origen and others of Hebrew originals in their own day by no means goes so far as to prove that such never existed, as Rothstein in Kautzsch (I. 179) truly says.
Since Gaster's discovery of an Aramaic text of the Dragon (not of Bel), the probability of a Semitic rather than a Greek original seems strengthened. But see what Schürer thinks, under the corresponding title in the Song of the Three, as also of the Syriac version at the end of Neubauer's Tobit. C.H. Toy, too, in his article in the Jewish Encyclopædia, Vol. II, says: "In the present state of knowledge it seems better to reserve opinion as to its antiquity."
Delitzsch, at the end of his Commentatio de Hab. proph. vita atque ætate (Lips. 1842), prints in Rabbinic characters a Persian rendering, "ex codice Paris-Reg. judaico-persico," which he says "ex textu hebraico vel aramaico factam esse, ex crebris hebraismis patet" (p. 105). And on pp. 26, 27 he prints the LXX from v. 28 to the end, and adds: "Hæc omnia ad verbum Hebraico vel Aramaico translata esse dictionis simplicitas, structura ac tota indoles clamat atque testatur." But on p. 41 he quotes the opinion of Prof. Solomon Munk, of Paris (Notice sur Rab. Saadia Gaon, p. 84), that this Hebrew text, translated into Persian, was itself made by some European Rabbi from the Greek or Latin Bible. And a similar origin for Gaster's text is now thought far from unlikely.
It may be well here to give a few brief notes on the separate phrases as they occur:
v. 3 Θ. With ἐδαπανῶντο, cf. אֲכַלֶּה ב׳ of Deut. xxxii. 23 ("I will spend my arrows upon," etc.). Δαπανάω occurs with ἐν and ἐπί in N.T. Greek, but apparently not with εἰς, nor yet in the canonical O.T. Deissmann, however, attempts to shew that this use of εἰς, instead of 'dativus commodi,' is an Alexandrian idiom (Bible Studies, Eng. tr., Edinb. 1900, p. 127). כלא is also used in Aramaic in the same sense in Pahel.
v. 6 Ο´. The same phrase as the last recurs, inverted: εἰς αὐτὸν δαπανᾶται.
v. 7 Ο´. Here the accusative after ὀμνύω might be taken as favouring a Greek original, since ἐν for ב would seem natural in a translation of Hebrew or Aramaic.
v. 7 Θ; v. 11 Ο´, Θ; v. 27 Ο´. The occurrence of βασιεῦ in these verses suggests a rendering of מַלְבָּא which is used several times in the Aramaic portion of Daniel, while it never occurs in the vocative in the Hebrew portion. This indication, small though it be, inclines of course towards an Aramaic rather than a Hebrew original.
v. 10 Ο´, Θ. Scholz's suggestion that χωρίς and ἐκτός are translations of לבר is more probable than some of his ideas, for it is rendered by both these words more than once in the Greek O.T.