The additions to Daniel are three chapters not found in the

Hebrew Hebrew (; ''ʿÎbrit'') is a Northwest Semitic languages, Northwest Semitic language within the Afroasiatic languages, Afroasiatic language family. A regional dialect of the Canaanite languages, it was natively spoken by the Israelites and ...

Aramaic Aramaic (; ) is a Northwest Semitic language that originated in the ancient region of Syria and quickly spread to Mesopotamia, the southern Levant, Sinai, southeastern Anatolia, and Eastern Arabia, where it has been continually written a ...

text of Daniel. The text of these chapters is found in the

Septuagint The Septuagint ( ), sometimes referred to as the Greek Old Testament or The Translation of the Seventy (), and abbreviated as LXX, is the earliest extant Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible from the original Biblical Hebrew. The full Greek ...

, the earliest extant Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible from the original Hebrew. The three chapters are as follows. * The Prayer of Azariah and Song of the Three Holy Children: Daniel 3:24–90 (in the Greek Translation) are removed from the Protestant canon after verse 23 (v. 24 becomes v. 91), within the Fiery Furnace episode. When Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego are thrown into a furnace for declining to worship an idol, they are rescued by an angel and sing a song of worship. In some Greek Bibles, the Prayer and the Song appear in an appendix to the book of

Psalms The Book of Psalms ( , ; ; ; ; , in Islam also called Zabur, ), also known as the Psalter, is the first book of the third section of the Tanakh (Hebrew Bible) called ('Writings'), and a book of the Old Testament. The book is an anthology of B ...

. * Susanna and the Elders: before Daniel 1:1, a prologue in early Greek manuscripts; chapter 13 in the

Vulgate The Vulgate () is a late-4th-century Bible translations into Latin, Latin translation of the Bible. It is largely the work of Saint Jerome who, in 382, had been commissioned by Pope Damasus I to revise the Gospels used by the Diocese of ...

. This episode, along with Bel and the Dragon, is one of "the two earliest examples" of a detective story, according to Christopher Booker. In it, two corrupt judges attempt to coerce a young married woman into having adulterous sexual relations with them through blackmail, but are foiled under close questioning by Daniel.Christopher Booker (2004), '' The Seven Basic Plots'', page
505–506
/ref> * Bel and the Dragon: after Daniel 12:13 in Greek, an epilogue; chapter 14 in the Vulgate. Daniel's detective work reveals that a brass idol believed to miraculously consume sacrifices is in fact a front for a corrupt priesthood which is stealing the offerings. The

Book of Daniel The Book of Daniel is a 2nd-century BC biblical apocalypse with a 6th-century BC setting. It is ostensibly a narrative detailing the experiences and Prophecy, prophetic visions of Daniel, a Jewish Babylonian captivity, exile in Babylon ...

is preserved in the 12-chapter

Masoretic Text The Masoretic Text (MT or 𝕸; ) is the authoritative Hebrew and Aramaic text of the 24 books of the Hebrew Bible (''Tanakh'') in Rabbinic Judaism. The Masoretic Text defines the Jewish canon and its precise letter-text, with its vocaliz ...

and in two longer Greek versions: the original Septuagint version, , and the later

Theodotion Theodotion (; , ''gen''.: Θεοδοτίωνος; died c. 200) was a Hellenistic Jewish scholar, perhaps working in Ephesus, who in c. A.D. 150 translated the Hebrew Bible into Greek. History Whether he was revising the Septuagint, or was wor ...

version from . Both Greek texts contain the three additions to Daniel. The Masoretic text does not. In other respects Theodotion is much closer to the Masoretic Text, and became so popular that it replaced the original Septuagint version in all but two manuscripts of the Septuagint itself. The Greek additions were apparently never part of the Hebrew text. Several Old Greek texts of the Book of Daniel have been discovered, and the original form of the book is being reconstructed.

References

External links

NRSV: Prayer of AzariahNRSV: SusannaNRSV: Bel and the DragonDaniel
(including Azariah and the Song)
SousannaBel and the Dragon
in the ''New English Translation of the Septuagint''. * {{Authority control Deuterocanonical books Jewish apocrypha

See also

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External links