Book One: On the Sacred and Apocryphal Books

Chapter Nine: on Certain Chapters in Daniel

The Jews, on the evidence of Blessed Jerome in his preface to Daniel, take no account of the hymn of the three youths which is contained in Daniel ch3, nor of the history of Susannah, which is contained in ch.13, and the history of the dragon which Daniel slew, which is contained in ch.14. For like reason Porphyry in bk.12 of the 15 he wrote against the Christians, on the evidence of the same Jerome in the preface to his commentary on Daniel, and some of the heretics of our own day, as Chemnitz in his Exam. of Sess.4 of the Council of Trent, and especially the Anabaptists, are involved in the same error.

Not only heretics, pagans, and Jews but also once Julius Africanus, from among the Catholic Christians, repudiated the story of Susannah as adulterated and novel, on the evidence of Eusebius Hist. bk.6 ch.23. Among recent thinkers John Driedo bk.1 on Scripture and Ecclesiastical Dogmas last ch., and among semi-­‐ Christians Erasmus in his Scholia to the preface of Jerome on Daniel, have thought the same.

But nevertheless it is certain that all these parts of Daniel are truly canonical, as is proved first by the Council of Trent and the use of the Church, which argument should have great force with Driedo and other Catholics. The Council in sess.4 bids the sacred books with all their parts to be received the way they are accustomed to be read in the Catholic Church. But the hymn of the three boys is read with the mass on the Saturday of the four times, and on all feast days in the prayers of the morning office. The story of Susannah is read whole in the mass on the Saturday before the fourth Sunday of Lent; finally the story of the slain dragon is read in the mass of the third feast after the fifth Sunday of Lent. Nor only at this time but also before the year 1200 all these parts of Daniel were in the Church, as Ruffinus testifies bk.2 against Jerome.

Second it is proved by the testimonies of the ancients. Blessed Ignatius in his epistle to the Magnesians cites the story of Susannah from Daniel ch.13; the same is cited by Tertullian in his book on the Crown of the Soldier. Blessed Cyprian in his Sermon on the Lord’s prayer brings forward the hymn of the three boys, and he says the Scripture is divine in which the hymn is contained. The same in his Sermon on the lapsed, “Divine Scripture says etc.” and he cites the words of the same boys in the fire. In bk.1 epist.8 he adduces the story of Susannah, bk.4 epist.6 the story of the dragon, and the same in bk.3 epist.1, bk.1 epist.4. Again in his Sermon on the Lord’s prayer and his Sermon on almsgiving he cites the story of the meal of Habbakuk brought in for Daniel. Blessed Basil in his book on the Holy Spirit ch.30, Epiphanius in his Anchorite, and Blessed John Chrysostom in Homily 4 to the people, all cite the hymn, or the story of the three boys; and in his Sermon on the three boys and his Sermon on Susannah, which are contained in the first volume, he explains the same stories and calls them divine. Theodoret in his commentary on Daniel also expounds the hymn of the three boys with the other parts of the same Prophet. Blessed Ambrose bk.3 on the Holy Spirit ch.7, when treating of the story of Susannah, openly teaches that the Scripture is divine, as are the other parts of the same prophet.

Blessed Augustine in his book on the Nature of the Good ch.16 proves against the Manichees that corporeal things are good from the hymn of the three boys, where light and darkness etc. praise the God. And in epist.122 to Victorianus he cites the prayer of Azariah which he poured forth in the burning fiery furnace. And in tract.36 on John he adduces the story of Susannah. Origen carefully defends these parts of Daniel and contends especially that the story of Susannah is canonical Scripture, both in his Homily 1 on Leviticus and in his epistle to Julius Africanus. Blessed Athanasius in his Synopsis when he comes to Daniel and briefly explains the argument of the whole book, makes mention in expressive words of Susannah, of the hymn of the three boys, and of the slain dragon; and he openly declares that all of them pertain to the body of Divine Scripture.

Lastly it is credible that the old Councils, of Laodicea and the Third of Carthage, and the primitive Fathers, who used the Greek edition, when they reported Daniel in the number of the holy Scriptures, spoke about the book of Daniel that is contained in the Greek vulgate codices. But in the Greek vulgate codices all these parts without doubt are contained, as is openly collected from the Synopsis of Athanasius and the commentary of Theodoret, and also from the preface of Jerome on Daniel, where he testifies that the Church of Christ reads Daniel in the edition of Theodotion, in which edition all these parts are contained.

But adversaries raise objections. First, the opinion of Blessed Jerome who both in his preface to Daniel, translated by himself into Latin, and in the preface to his commentary on Daniel makes sufficiently clear that those chapters are not of any authority. Jerome himself responds in Apology 2 against Ruffinus, near the end, that he did not expound what he thought in those prologues but pointed out what the Jews said.

But Jerome also there calls the story of Susannah and the dragon fables. I reply: when he calls them fables he means to call those things histories which the Jews call fables; I add too that the ancients sometimes call, not fictions, but true narrations by the name of fables. The way it is in Luke last chapter, “and as they were talking (fabularentur) and asking among themselves etc.”, and Minucius Felis at the beginning of his dialogue, which he entitled Octavius, calls a certain true narration of some sea journey or other a fable. Clement of Alexandria too in Eusebius Hist. bk.3 ch.23 when about to narrate a very true story about St. John says, “hear a fable not a fable etc.” as if he were to say, hear a fable, not however a fictional and false one, but a certain and true one.

Secondly the adversaries object that in the story of Susannah Daniel is introduced as a boy. “The Lord,” he says, “stirred up the holy spirit of a young boy”. But this cannot be true, for earlier in ch.6 Daniel is said to have been one of the satraps of the kingdom of Darius the Mede, at which time he was certainly not a boy; how then later in ch.13 is he said to be a boy?

Suppose you say that Scripture does not tell everything in order but tells first what was done later, and for this reason in the codices of the Greeks, where the order is kept, the whole book begins from the story of Susannah. On the contrary, for in this ch.13 it is made sufficiently plain that the story of Susannah happened at the beginning of the reign of Cyrus king of the Persians. For thus does the chapter conclude: “And king Astyages was laid with his fathers, and Cyrus the Persian took up the kingdom”. Therefore from this chapter we have that Daniel was a boy at the time of Cyrus; but this is false. For Daniel was taken as a boy along with king Jochaniah by Nebuchodonosor from Jerusalem to Babylon, as is said in Daniel 1. Further from that time up to Cyrus seventy years went by, as is plain in 1 Ezra ch.1. Therefore at the beginning of the reign of Cyrus Daniel was about 80 or 90 years old; how then was he a boy of 90 years?

Add the fact that even at the time of Nabuchodonosor Daniel does not seem to have been a boy, but now already dead, since Ezekiel, who prophesied at the time of Nabuchodonosor, in the fifth year of the return, as is said in Ezekiel 1, makes mention of Daniel as already dead. For thus he says in ch.14, “If those three men, Noah, Daniel, and Job stood before me, as I live, says the Lord, they will not set free their son or daughter”. Daniel at that time therefore already had sons and was dead as were Noah and Job.

I reply that the story of Susannah happened long before the time of Cyrus when Daniel was truly a boy and it rightly deserves to be put by the Greeks at the beginning of the book; however it is not badly placed by the Latins at the end of the book, so that we might learn that it is not possessed by the Hebrews. But as to what is said at the end of ch.13 after the story of Susannah, “And Astyages was laid with his fathers, and Cyrus the Persian took up his kingdom”, this does not refer to the story of Susannah just narrated but is the beginning of another story that happened under Cyrus. Therefore in the Greek codices the story of Susannah is ch.1 of the whole book, but the words “And King Astyages was laid with his fathers” are put at the beginning of the last chapter, where the story of the destruction of Bel and the slaying of the dragon is told.

Now as to the point from Ezekiel, Blessed Jerome replies in bk.1 Against Jovinian that mention is made by Ezekiel of Daniel not as already dead but as still living in the age of boyhood; but he is counted among those very grave men Noah and Job because he was known to the people because of the liberation of Susannah and his interpretations of dreams; or, as the same Jerome says on ch.14 of Ezekiel, that as Noah saw the happiness of the world before the flood, the calamity afterwards at the time of the flood, and again the happiness after the flood, and as Job saw his own happiness before his testing, afterwards his misery under testing, and again his happiness after testing, so Daniel saw himself happy in the kingdom of the Jews before the captivity, afterwards as captive and wretched, finally as again happy when he was placed by Darius among the chief princes. Nor is it necessary that Daniel then had sons and daughters, because Ezekiel is speaking by way of hypothesis, as if he were to say that even if those three were there and had sons and daughters, they could not free them from imminent evil.

The adversaries object third that the things said in ch.14 about Daniel sent into the lions’ den are in conflict with what is said in ch.6. For in ch.6 he is said to have been only one night in the lions’ den, and in ch.14 six days.

I reply that Daniel was sent twice into the lions’ den, once by Darius the Mede, since he prayed to God against the precept of the king, and then he was there only one night; and this is narrated in ch.6; but he was again sent into the lions’ den by Cyrus because of the killing of the dragon, and then he was there six days, as is said in ch.14. Add that it is not improbable that the Daniel who freed Susannah and destroyed Bel and killed the dragon and was six days in the lions’ den is not the same as the Daniel who is treated of in the earlier chapters. That there are many who once thought this is evidenced by Jerome in his commentary on Daniel and the Greek Septuagint says openly that the latter Daniel was of the tribe of Levi, as Jerome there notes, while it is certain that the former was of the tribe of Judah. And if this is how things stand, the two arguments just made pose no difficulty.

The adversaries object fourth that the story of Susannah seems altogether made up by some Greek. For where we read, “Say under what tree you saw them talking to each other? He said, under a terebinth [schinus]. But Daniel said, you have rightly lied against your own head; for behold the angel of the Lord will split [scindo] you in the middle”, a certain elegant allusion is made in the Greek from the tree Schinus to the action Scindo; for the Greek words are similar; and when the other said he saw them under an oak, allusion is made by Daniel from the tree to the action of cutting, for the Greek words are similar. Just as if one were to say, where did you see them? under a holm oak [ilice]; therefore you will at once [illico] be killed. But in Hebrew no such allusion can be made for there is no similarity in the case of the Hebrew words for these things.

Origen replies in his epistle to Julius Africanus. Daniel did not say holm oak, nor evergreen, but something else unknown to us, to which, however, according to the properties of the Hebrew or Chaldaic tongue, which Daniel used, some word for cutting would correspond. For the Hebrews have many words to signify splitting or cutting. Further, the Greek translator did not translate to the letter but to the sense, and in order to keep the allusion took other similar trees to which in Greek an allusion to a verb of splitting would correspond.

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