translated by D. M. Kay, in R. H. Charles's Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha of the Old Testament (1913)
Susanna is a courtroom drama set among the Jewish community of Babylon. Two respected elders, made judges over the people, become secretly enamoured of the virtuous Susanna, wife of the wealthy Joakim, and conspire to force themselves on her in her husband's garden. When she refuses and cries out, the elders turn on her, publicly accusing her of adultery with a young man who supposedly escaped — a charge the whole assembly believes, on the strength of the elders' office, and for which she is condemned to death. As she is led away to execution, a young man named Daniel objects that she has been condemned without real examination of the evidence, and cross-examines the two elders separately; their accounts contradict each other, exposing them as false witnesses and saving Susanna's life. The story is at once a suspenseful vindication of an innocent woman and an argument, sharpened by controversies of its own time, for the rigorous cross-examination of witnesses in capital cases.
Introductory Note (1913, D. M. Kay)
§ 1. Contents of the Story of Susanna, and Summary of Results in Introduction
Two elders are made judges in a Jewish community. One evening they see a Jewess walking in her husband's garden, and both become enamoured of her. Next morning they detect each other near the garden, acknowledge to each other their passion, agree to accost the woman, and are repulsed with scorn. To protect themselves they must accuse the woman; they betake themselves to the synagogue of the city and issue a summons to Susanna. She appears with her household, and is ordered to be unveiled. The elders appear as witnesses before the assembled people. They aver that while they were walking in her husband's garden, they detected the woman in company with a youth who escaped. Being arrested she refused to tell who her paramour was. The official standing of the elders leads the whole synagogue to believe the evidence and to condemn Susanna.
On her way to execution, a youth (Daniel) questions the verdict, reopens the trial, and examines the two elders separately. The one says the crime took place under a mastick tree; the other says under a holm tree. The contradiction condemns both. The synagogue applauds the young man because he had proved them to be false witnesses. And as the Law prescribes, they did unto them as they had wickedly devised against their sister. The elders are gagged, cast into a ravine, and destroyed by fire from heaven.
The inspired sincerity of youth, by means of cross-examination, prevented a judicial murder; therefore let youth be honoured.
The later version of Theodotion locates the scene in Babylon when Daniel was "a young lad." The house of Joakim, husband of Susanna, is the resort of the people and place of trial. The scene in the garden is more detailed.
This story of Susanna is a parable intended to illustrate the value and necessity of cross-examination of witnesses. It also seeks to vindicate the execution of false witnesses, although their victim may be delivered before his sentence was carried out. The story is a product of the Pharisaic controversy with the Sadducees in the later years of Alexander Jannaeus, c. 95–80 B.C. The original language was the literary Hebrew of that period. A later recension of the Hebrew named the deliverer Daniel, and associated the story with Daniel conceived as an historical person living in Babylon in the early years of the Captivity. This subsequent association with Daniel is the main cause of the differences between Theodotion's version and the Septuagint. The story circulated independently, and was sometimes associated with the name of Habakkuk. The Septuagint before the Christian era placed it in an appendix to Daniel; Theodotion and the uncial manuscripts, in the interests of chronology, make Susanna the opening chapter of Daniel. The Hebrew manuscripts now extant have no claim to be considered the original of the Greek versions.
§ 2. Title
In the earliest manuscripts the story has no name of its own, being simply part of "Daniel" in B and A, or "Daniel according to Theodotion" in Θ. In Codex Chisianus, the Septuagint Daniel is entitled "Daniel according to the Seventy." This title is repeated at the end of Daniel xii; Daniel xiii is headed "Susanna." Codex Chisianus gives Theodotion's version under the curious title "the Watcher Daniel," Susanna being chapter 13; chapter 14, which follows, bears the superscription "From the prophecy of Ambakoum, son of Jesus, of the tribe of Levi." The Syriac Hexapla makes the latter title include Susanna. A codex from Athos gives "Eleven visions of the prophet Daniel," followed by matter concerning Habakkuk, the whole preceded by "Concerning Susanna." Another Greek title is "The Judgement of Daniel."
The Syriac versions give: "History of Shushan" (Peshitta); "the book of the youthful Daniel, the history of Shushan" (the Harkleensian edition); and "Book of the Women" (i.e. Susanna, Judith, Ruth, Esther) in the Bible of the Jacobite Syrians.
The Vulgate places Daniel between Ezekiel and Hosea as "the prophecy of Daniel," Susanna being its thirteenth chapter. The Arabic version opens with an invocation of the Trinity and "begins to translate the prophecy of the prophet Daniel, whose prayer be for us! Amen." In general literature the designation varies, e.g. "the drama of Susannis" (attributed to Nicolas of Damascus); "Pistill (epistle) of Swete Susan," in Scots poems of the fourteenth century.
The position in which Susanna is inserted also varies. It precedes the canonical Daniel in B, A, Q, the Old Latin, and the Copto-Memphitic versions; it is appended after Daniel xii in the Septuagint, the Syro-tetraplar version of the Septuagint, the Vulgate, and versions based on it.
These titles reflect variety of opinion as to the origin, authorship, and character of the story. There is uncertainty as to whether the book is history, prophecy, apocalypse, apocryphal, or canonical scripture.
§ 3. The Manuscripts
The Codex Chisianus 87, first published at Rome in 1772, is for Susanna, as for Daniel, the sole authority for the Greek of the Septuagint. It is a ninth-century cursive, and at the end of Daniel xii notes that it was copied from an exemplar with a subscription stating that it was written from the Tetrapla, with which it had also been collated. Its text is thus only once removed from the recension of the Septuagint made by Origen, c. A.D. 240. The Codex Chisianus receives important corroboration from the Syro-Hexaplar Codex, written in Alexandria A.D. 616–617 by Mar Paulus of Mesopotamia, in which the Septuagint text from Origen's Hexapla is rendered literally into Syriac. The agreement of Chisianus with the Syro-Hexaplar gives assurance for the Septuagint text of Susanna as approved by Origen. The Old Latin versions and quotations in the Fathers do not suffice to fix a generally received text at an earlier period.
Theodotion's version of Susanna was adopted into the Greek Bible in place of the Septuagint. It has thus all the manuscript evidence available for the Greek Daniel in the Church Bible, and is found in Codex Vaticanus (B), Codex Alexandrinus (A), and Codex Marchalianus (Q), sixth century. The text used here is that of Swete, vol. iii.
Among manuscripts, two in Hebrew require notice, because the question of a Semitic original is much discussed, and because one of them has been supposed to contain the Semitic original of certain apocryphal books.
In the Bodleian Library at Oxford is a manuscript (Heb. d. 11, Catalogue No. 2797) called Sepher has-Zikhronoth, compiled by Asher ha-Levi about A.D. 1325, written in German rabbinical character. It contains legendary matter illustrating biblical history from the Creation to the time of the Maccabees. The catalogue describes the contents of the part preceding Susanna as a Hebrew translation of the Aramaic passages in Daniel by Yerahmeel, the Aramaic text of the Song of the Three Children, and the history of Bel and the Dragon in Syriac written in Hebrew characters without a Hebrew translation. At folio 74b begins the Midrash concerning Ahab and Zedekiah (Jeremiah xxix. 21). Folios 75a and 75b contain the Story of Susanna in Hebrew, occupying fifty-three lines; a later hand has headed the page "The Story of Susanna," and the story itself begins a new paragraph with the same heading. After Susanna, the history of Nebuchadnezzar is resumed. The compiler considered the elders identical with the false prophets mentioned by Jeremiah, and located the story in Babylon. Whether this Hebrew text has any claim to be considered the original of the Septuagint and Theodotion is doubtful: the Greek versions have some thirty verses nearly identical, but in these passages this manuscript omits much, adds not a little, and freely paraphrases the rest. Two translators, however arbitrary, could not make this text responsible for the agreements or divergences that exist between the Septuagint and Theodotion. The language is in parts a fair imitation of biblical Hebrew, in other parts not. The compiler evidently knew Syriac, and may have carelessly followed some Syriac version in writing the story for the amusement of his heirs; his object appears in his preface: "Blessed be my descendants, and may they be established if they fulfil my wishes."
The second Hebrew manuscript is also in the Bodleian (Heb. MS. e. 12, Catalogue No. 2779). The volume, with which the leaf containing Susanna is bound up, contains hymns, astronomical tables, and other matter, disorderly arranged. The copyist of folio 3 signs himself Mordecai ben Samuel, and finished his work A.D. 1691; a note on folio 71 implies the date A.D. 1737.
Susanna occupies both sides of one folio (55), thirty-five lines on the first page, thirty-four on the other. The story conforms closely to the Greek of Theodotion, so closely that either the Vulgate or Theodotion must have been used by the translator into Hebrew. The additions and omissions in Heb. e. 12 are not many and not important: the garden (v. 3) "has all kinds of trees"; the elders are called "priests"; the maids fetch soap going out "by the doors of the house." The Hebrew is more idiomatic than in manuscript d. 11, yet here too we have a version rather than an original: the writer has not understood verse 5, yet has tried to be faithful to the obscurity of the Greek; in verse 15 he has failed to recognize the Greek behind a phrase and renders loosely; in verse 18 he ignores the gender in the verbs; the comparative he renders inexactly. That he used Theodotion and not the Vulgate appears from his treatment of verse 22, where he reproduces the repetition of sound in the Greek ("and Susanna groaned and said, I am straitened..."). He ignores the play on the names of the trees.
These two Hebrew manuscripts are of some interest as showing the Jewish attitude to the story during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. They also illustrate the facility with which every phrase of the Greek can be reproduced in Hebrew.
§ 4. The Ancient Versions
Two forms of the Old Latin version of Daniel can be traced. Burkitt finds that the tract De Pascha Computus, dated A.D. 243, is the earliest Latin follower of Theodotion's Greek for Daniel; but the earliest Latin version of Daniel, as witnessed by Tertullian, Victorinus of Pettau, and partly by Cyprian, was made from the Septuagint, in a form differing slightly from Origen's edition but agreeing most closely with the quotations of Justin Martyr. In Sabatier's edition, the Versio Antiqua preserves about forty-four of the sixty-five verses of Susanna found in the Vulgate; in these, Theodotion's version is much more obvious than the Septuagint. Sabatier notes that on Flaminius Nobilius's authority this history of Susanna stood, in all the ancient books, at the beginning of Daniel — in many inscribed "Daniel" as in ours, in some "Susanna," in one "The Judgement of Daniel." In the sixth-century Codex Wirceburgensis palimpsest, Susanna verses 2–10 survive.
The Vulgate. Jerome's preference for Theodotion's Susanna led to the disappearance of the Septuagint Susanna. Jerome says the churches of his time read Daniel according to Theodotion, the Septuagint Daniel having long been discarded — "why this happened, I do not know" — but after comparing both versions with the Semitic original in the rest of Daniel, he agrees that sound judgement had been shown in substituting Theodotion. The Vulgate therefore puts Theodotion's Greek into Latin. At the end of Daniel xii this note precedes Susanna: "Thus far we have read Daniel in the Hebrew volume; what follows to the end of the book is translated from the edition of Theodotion." Jerome therefore had never seen a Hebrew or Aramaic Susanna. The Vulgate has an extra verse at the end, verse 65: "And King Astyages was gathered to his fathers, and Cyrus the Persian received his kingdom" — an error in chronology properly belonging to Bel and the Dragon, which follows as chapter 14.
Syriac. The Septuagint Susanna is faithfully reproduced in Syriac in the Codex Siro-estrangelo of the Biblioteca Ambrosiana, made at Alexandria by Mar Paulus of Mesopotamia in A.D. 616–617; it is an exact translation and serves to fix the Septuagint text as approved by Origen in A.D. 240. Walton's Polyglot gives two further Syriac versions, the Peshitta and the Philoxenian or Harkleensian (made by Thomas, Bishop of Heraklea, about A.D. 616); both are based on Theodotion but make additions in sympathy with the story. Two other Syriac versions, edited by Lagarde from manuscripts in the British Museum of the ninth and tenth centuries, resemble Walton's first Syriac version, though in the last twenty verses the variations between the two are considerable.
Coptic Versions. The Copto-Memphitic was based on Theodotion's version, and may have been made by the beginning of the fourth century; though it is impossible to say with certainty which recension of Theodotion's text it followed, it shows great fidelity to Theodotion throughout. In this version Susanna is found at the beginning of Daniel. No fragments of Susanna appear to have survived in the Sahidic version; the Song appears in chapter 3.
Arabic. John, Bishop of Seville (A.D. 719), is supposed to have made an Arabic version of the Bible from the Latin Vulgate. The version printed in the Polyglots is derived from an old Greek manuscript akin to A; the version of Susanna in Walton conforms to the Vulgate. The two trees are given Arabic names, but no attempt is made to reproduce the wordplay in the verbs.
The new elements found in the versions, especially in the Harkleensian Syriac, have been supposed by some (Brüll, Ball) to be independent gleanings from tradition. The fidelity of the translators has sometimes been affected by the warmth of their feelings: in the Syriac Harkleensian, Susanna is only a few days betrothed to Joachim, and the rest of her life is passed in widowhood devoted to the Lord's service; in the same version Susanna is set free from her chains; a Hebrew version speaks of "the elders, the accursed rascals."
§ 5. The Original Text
"Things originally spoken in Hebrew have not the same force in them when they are translated into another tongue" — so testified the younger Ben-Sira, c. 130 B.C., when he laboured to render into Greek the Hebrew composition of his grandfather. The Semite and the Aryan had created their languages in different worlds; between them there was no aboriginal kinship such as embraced the Greek and the Roman. The verbal paradigm of a Semitic tongue cannot be forcibly adjusted to the moods and tenses of the Greek verb; a Greek could neither pronounce nor write the sound "Shoshanna." Ben-Sira's "labour" was in some respects like trying to graft the laurel on the palm.
The two tense-forms of Semitic speech, aided in Hebrew by the potent Vav consecutive, offer perceptible resistance to expression in the Greek idiom. One effect is a monotonous repetition of "and" introducing clauses which can be more subtly linked by the Vav in Hebrew. In the Septuagint of Susanna, "and" introduces clauses, where a Hebrew Vav consecutive or conjunctive would conveniently replace it, over fifty times; an equal extent of narrative and dialogue in St. John's Gospel yields such a use only twenty times, St. Luke fifteen, Josephus twelve. A Greek-speaking Jew, or a Greek influenced by the Septuagint, composing in his own conversational Greek, thus by this test exhibits a freedom conspicuously absent from Susanna. A similar test shows that the Greek pronoun for the third person, standing for a Hebrew pronominal suffix, occurs much oftener than in the Greek which an Alexandrian Jew such as Philo writes spontaneously. Redundant auxiliary verbs reflect a superfluous Hebrew idiom; "and it came to pass" for the corresponding Hebrew formula recurs repeatedly in Theodotion; a distinctive Aramaic-flavoured construction appears at several points in Theodotion; particular Greek phrases correspond closely to known Hebrew idioms for "as yesterday and the day before," "exceedingly," "behold," "one another," the infinitive with a preposition expressing purpose, and the vocative expressed with the article, as in "O sons of Israel." The versions preserve traces of the more literal Hebrew for "her parents," which the Septuagint sometimes renders more literally as "her father and her mother," while Theodotion smooths it to "her parents."
The names of the trees, together with the wordplay between the name of one tree and the verb "to cleave" (in the case of the mastick), and between the name of the other tree and the verb "to saw asunder" (in the case of the holm), have led some, since Africanus, to assume a Greek original: "the history of Susanna is even very certainly a Greek original," Africanus and Porphyry already argued, from the play on the words. Theodotion often resorts to transliteration of Hebrew words, and is especially timid about the names of trees elsewhere in his version; had his Hebrew text suggested the tree-names as prompting the choice of verbs, Theodotion would surely have transliterated them as he does elsewhere. But the Septuagint's Greek here is so apt that it proved irresistible to Theodotion, who as a translator elsewhere prefers to guess rather than transliterate. From this internal evidence we conclude that both Greek texts are versions dependent upon a Hebrew original.
This conclusion is confirmed by comparing the texts of the Septuagint and Theodotion. Half the story coincides in both, sometimes verbally identical, sometimes agreeing in sense though differing in terms; the variation consists in the use of a synonym, or a different construction, or a different order of words. The nature of the resemblances in the two Greek texts shows that neither writer works independently; where they disagree, both write constrained Greek. Apart from the Semitic idioms common to both texts, the identity, the nature of the resemblances, and the divergences all suggest translators working from a common original rather than independent authors handling a shared tradition freely. Theodotion is a critical reviser of the Septuagint, but he too defers to an authority superior to the Greek.
Had Susanna been written in Greek to scourge certain officials in Alexandria, it could scarcely have been represented as Babylonian history, where Greek was unknown; its association with the Canon would then be unlikely, and, had there been no Hebrew original, it is difficult to see why Symmachus and Theodotion should have taken the trouble to revise a casual tract about an Alexandrian scandal. Origen and Jerome could find no Hebrew archetype, but the second century A.D. produced versions enough to secure a place for Susanna in the Tetrapla of Origen, c. A.D. 240. It appears doubtful whether Aquila included Susanna: Akiba was his tutor, and the Jewish Canon, definitively settled c. A.D. 90, excluded Susanna. The story would not be popular with elders, and it was the elders who fixed the Canon; Susanna was useless for the polemical purposes of Judaism, since it reflected on the good name of the daughters of Israel and the probity of the judges. It was, therefore, an encumbrance to the Canon, and was excluded — Hippolytus, Bishop of Rome, already suggests this explanation before A.D. 230. The marginal notes in the Syro-estrangelo Tetrapla imply that Aquila had no Susanna. But unless there had been a Hebrew archetype in the time of Symmachus and Theodotion (A.D. 150–200), there is no sufficient reason why Susanna should have been included in Origen's Tetrapla at all.
§ 6. Integrity or Composite Nature of the Text
The story of Susanna is skilfully compacted. Its characters are few and vividly contrasted; the issues at stake are of universal interest, death or dishonour are the calamities imminent, suspense deepens as the story proceeds, there is an impressive reversal of the intended effect into its direct opposite, and at the end nothing remains to be added except the applause of heaven and earth. A feeble woman in the right (compare Esther, Judith) has triumphed over tyranny in the wrong. The genius of the writer is more important than his material, whether that were chiefly legendary, traditional, or suggested by contemporary politics. Nobody remembers the raw material; nobody forgets the story.
Though the story is coherent and homogeneous, it appears to have suffered alteration in some features. The earlier form of the story seems to have had no connexion with Daniel or Babylon. In the Septuagint, Daniel is an intruder: he does not appear till verse 45, and is introduced awkwardly in apposition to "the young man." His name is mentioned only four times (verses 48, 51a, 52, 59); the original "young man" maintains his anonymous part in verses 52a, 55, and 60, and in the epilogue "the young men" are the heroes, while Daniel is forgotten. The contrast is not between youth and age, but between such a one as the son of Simon ben Shetach and the pair of Sadducean informers and judges who secured his condemnation by false witness. The son, who chose death in order that his father might be able, even on Sadducean principles, to inflict the penalty of death on his false accusers, is the "young man" come to judge justly. This requires us to suppose that the preface never belonged to the Septuagint (being superfluous in view of Septuagint verse 7), to delete the reference to Babylon in the difficult verse 6, and either to read "young man" throughout for "Daniel," or else merely to omit the proper name. (Kay notes here that while this reconstruction represents the prevailing scholarly opinion of these chapters, the General Editor, R. H. Charles, records his own hope to challenge it in a future work.)
The transference of this original story to Babylon offends against verisimilitude. Recent captives were not likely to have synagogues, popular election of judges, or the right to carry out a sentence of death. Joakim is too comfortable, with a pleasure garden and five hundred servants; the disastrous trees and the stadium have no place in Babylon. "Other cities" (verse 6) could be Judaean villages with fewer than a hundred and twenty families — a curious addition to "Babylon." Such features properly belong to Judaea in the time of John Hyrcanus and his successors.
The career of the individual Daniel also affects the question. The book of Daniel became known c. 165 B.C.; by its merit, and in the temper of the time, it became instantly popular, and was translated into Greek before 1 Maccabees was written. Meanwhile Daniel himself was a nebulous personality, half-angelic, wholly admirable: Theodotion's version of Daniel in Codex Chisianus bears a title meaning "the Watcher Daniel," a name applied to Daniel among the nations that knew him as "the Sleepless Angel keeping Watch." Josephus, apologizing to his Roman readers c. A.D. 90 for treating the Book of Daniel as history, writes that he has described these matters as he found and read them, and that anyone inclined to a different opinion is free to enjoy it without blame from him. In the time of Alexander Jannaeus, Daniel was still a semi-angelic figure, not yet regarded as an historical person who had lived during the time his book describes. In the heat of the struggle between Pharisee and Sadducee, a polemical tract would have been derided had it made such use of his name as Susanna does. There is evidence that Susanna circulated independently of Daniel: Jerome, in his preface to the Commentary on Daniel, cites the opinion of Eusebius and Apollinarius that the fables of Susanna, Bel, and the Dragon are not contained in the Hebrew, but form part of a prophecy of Habakkuk son of Jesus of the tribe of Levi; and in Codex Chisianus, Bel (Daniel xiv) still bears the superscription "from the prophecy of Ambakoum son of Jesus of the tribe of Levi." Suidas derives "Ambakoum" from Hebrew roots suggesting "father of resurrection," comparing the Gospel phrase "Talitha cumi." The additions to Daniel were thus, by a section of early tradition, connected with the name of Habakkuk.
The intrusion of Daniel and Babylon into the story explains the chief differences between the Septuagint as reconstructed above and Theodotion's version. The preface is new, and locates the scene in Babylon; the epilogue ignores the "young man" of the Septuagint and sings the praise of Daniel; Joakim comes to resemble the Chief of the Captivity, at whose house justice is administered and the trial conducted. It is easier to identify Joakim with the captive king Jehoiachin; no children are mentioned, and anxiety for the continuance of the Davidic line may supply a motive for the methods of Ahab and Zedekiah. Details are added chiefly in the garden scene: doors are shut, the maids are dismissed, no other observer is present, and the guilty youth escapes though the elders try to prevent him — variations that make the evidence of the elders more telling against themselves. The Septuagint hurries over the garden scene; its interest is in the trial.
Theodotion as a translator is "simple and grave"; his habitual deference to the Hebrew text would not allow him to invent the additions found in his version of Susanna beyond the Septuagint. A second edition in Hebrew, adapted to Babylon, appears to be the source of his revision and extension of the Septuagint. When the story had achieved its purpose, when the dictum of Simon ben Shetach — "make full examination of the witnesses" — became dominant, it became possible to identify the youthful champion of the right with Daniel; Daniel's name, "El is my judge," commended his claim to be the "young man" of the first edition.
§ 7. Authorship and Date
Judaea was vigorous under John Hyrcanus and his sons, 139–79 B.C. Not content with subduing the Idumaeans, they also circumcised them; disapproving of the Samaritan heresy, they demolished the temple on Gerizim. They fought hard, sustained serious reverses, yet kept adding to their territory. At home in Jerusalem, Pharisee fought Sadducee with persistent energy. The points in dispute could seem trivial — should Pentecost be kept on a Sabbath? should there be a procession at the Feast of Tabernacles? should certain vessels of the Temple be ritually cleansed ("better wash the sun too," sneered the Sadducee)? should informers be executed before or after their victim has suffered punishment? does the intent to slay, in a false witness, merit death?
During the first ten years of his reign, 105–95 B.C., Alexander Jannaeus was too occupied with foreign war to take an active part in these disputes. At the Feast of Tabernacles, 95 B.C., while acting as high priest, he poured the water libation not upon the altar as the Pharisees required, but at his feet; the indignant worshippers pelted their king and high priest with the festive fruits in their hands. The king called in his Pisidian and Cilician mercenaries, who slew six thousand people in the Temple. Six years of civil war followed. After his defeat at Shechem, Jannaeus had eight hundred Pharisees crucified in Jerusalem in a single day; to save themselves, eight thousand Pharisees fled into exile. Weary of strife, the king asked the rival party what terms might satisfy them; "the first condition is thy death" was the reply. Nearing his end, the king appointed his queen, Salome Alexandra, regent, and left her this advice: "Fear not the true Pharisees or their honest opponents, but fear the painted ones who look like the Pharisees, whose works are like the work of Zimri, and who seek the reward of Phinehas." The Pharisees made the day of his death an annual festival.
The leader of the Pharisees in this period was Simon ben Shetach. While the Sadducees had control of the law courts, informers by false witness secured a verdict of death against Simon's son; before the sentence was carried out, the perjurers confessed, but according to Sadducean principles of exact retaliation, the perjurers could not then be executed. The son of Simon, however, refused to be tried again, preferring to die that his accusers might also suffer that penalty: "Father," said he, "if thou desirest that help should come through thee, use me as a threshold." Another point for which Simon ben Shetach contended was that informers should be carefully cross-examined: "Simon ben Shetach said, Make full examination of the witnesses; but be guarded in thy words, lest from them they learn to lie." Both these contentions were realized when the Pharisees came into power at the death of Jannaeus, 79 B.C. The Sanhedrin was reorganized, and witnesses in the law courts were no longer questioned merely on the place and time at which they had seen a crime committed, but were expected to give the most detailed and minute evidence, so that the judge might be more certain of a correct judgement and better able to entrap the witnesses should they contradict themselves.
The satire of the Sadducees, the vindication of the need and value of cross-examining informers, and the application of the law of exact retaliation to convicted perjurers, are the aim of Susanna. The story appears to belong to the period 95–80 B.C., and to have been written by a supporter of Simon ben Shetach. In the heat of controversy, neither party could well have called the young detective Daniel; that identification would suggest itself only once the tract had achieved its purpose. The language would be Hebrew: though Aramaic was the common language in Jerusalem at this time, writers, especially a Pharisee, would share in the temporary revival of interest in Hebrew, and the Semitic idioms in the Greek texts in many cases favour a Hebrew rather than an Aramaic source.
The Septuagint version may have been made before the Christian era, but its Hebrew exemplar already had only a slender attachment to Daniel. Theodotion, not later than A.D. 180, and possibly as early as the latest New Testament writers, used a Hebrew text which contained a new preface and epilogue emphasizing Babylon and Daniel. This conception led to the identification of the two elders with Ahab and Zedekiah, and to the assimilation of legends about the captive king Jehoiachin.
§ 8. Influence of the Book on Later Literature
In Jewish circles the story would prepare the general mind to appreciate the announcement of the Golden Rule. The domestic scandal it related would not win credit for Judaism among Gentile readers: Josephus does not care to make the story known to the Romans, and Akiba, about the same time, secures its exclusion from the Jewish Canon. It is doubtful whether Aquila included Susanna in his literal Greek version of the Hebrew Bible. Origen can find among learned Jews only vague stories about the elders; Africanus says the story is a fiction of recent date, which had never existed in Hebrew. Thereafter Judaism knows the story only as gossip about the methods of the false prophets Ahab and Zedekiah (Jeremiah xxix. 20–23). Brüll asserts that Nachmani is the only Jewish author of the Middle Ages who mentions Susanna, and his is really a reference to part of Judith, which he calls by a similar name. The Hebrew manuscripts of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries show that individuals were sufficiently interested to make careful copies, and that Jewish tradition still identified the elders with the false prophets of Babylon.
In Christian literature, the plea for the cross-examination of informers may have coloured the arguments of Justin in his Apology; the rescripts of the Emperors Hadrian and Antoninus Pius adopt the principle advocated in Susanna. Antoninus writes: "If any one hereafter shall go on to inform against this sort of men, purely because they are Christians, let the persons accused be discharged, although they be found to be Christians, and let the informer himself undergo the punishment."
In the Greek Old Testament of Alexandria, the story acquired authority by its attachment to the Book of Daniel, and thus secured the attention of the Church while it lost the regard of the synagogue. The Church hesitated to pronounce it prophecy, vision, or history: Matthew xxiv. 15 cites Daniel as a prophet, while the parallel passage in Mark xiii. 14 omits "the prophet" in the earliest manuscripts. Theodotion, the Syriac, and later versions regard Susanna as history; Jerome, with some hesitation, includes it under prophecy. The allegorical interpretation soon became dominant in the Church: Hippolytus, Bishop of Rome, A.D. 230, writes that Susanna is a type prefiguring the Church, Joachim her husband prefiguring Christ, the garden the election of the saints (like trees bearing fruit, planted in the Church), Babylon the world, and the two elders the two nations who plot against the Church, one of the circumcision and one of the Gentiles — a conception ably represented also in the latest Latin exposition, that of Anton Scholz.
An incipient phase of this allegorical view can be traced in Irenaeus before A.D. 200. In Against Heresies, iv. 26, Irenaeus quotes, as from Daniel, Susanna verses 20, 56, 52, and 53, explaining how prophecy acquires a new meaning after its fulfilment: the Jews who deny the Advent fail to understand the prophecies, and the true interpretation belongs to sincere disciples of Christ. There are impostors among presbyters, he says, who do evil secretly, saying "no one sees us"; to them apply the words of Daniel the prophet, "seed of Canaan, and not of Judah." He supports this reading by reference to Matthew xxiv. 48f. Irenaeus has no doubt that Daniel is a prophet, that Susanna belongs to his book and describes something that really happened, and that the divine purpose in the history of the world is made manifest in the Christian revelation; in the light of this new revelation, casual phrases in the old records acquire fresh significance.
Tertullian, in De Corona Militis, iv, discussing women's dress in connexion with 1 Corinthians xi. 5, argues that the interference with Susanna's veil does not warrant the inference that the veil was customary or necessary for women; he quotes the Greek word for the racecourse (stadion) as found in the Septuagint.
Origen defends the canonicity of Susanna and often refers to the book; Jerome gave it a place in the Vulgate. Before the Reformation the story had taken popular and dramatic form. Hildebert, Archbishop of Tours, "an outstanding versifier," made it the subject of a Latin poem (c. 1100); a play in the Ober-Engadine dialect adapted the story from German, as the Scots alliterative poems had done independently. Luther's Bible gave Susanna currency in the North as far as Iceland. The Council of Trent made its place in the Canon more secure. In the nineteenth century the Bible Societies, by refusing to circulate the Apocrypha, diminished the fame of Susanna in a section of Christendom. The Anglican Church reads from Susanna in November; the Latin Church makes use of it on the vigil of the fourth Sunday in Lent, and also in the Order for the Commendation of a Departing Soul: "Deliver, Lord, the soul of thy servant, as thou didst deliver Susanna from a false accusation."
The subject has been treated pictorially in the Catacombs, and also by modern artists.
§ 9. Theology
In Daniel, as in post-exilic literature generally, the divine name YHWH tends to become an unspoken name and is replaced by "Elohim" and "El." Only in Daniel ix does YHWH occur, and there seven times: the Septuagint renders it "Lord" six times and omits it once, while Theodotion has "Lord" all seven times. In the same chapter, "Adonai" for the divine name appears eleven times: the Septuagint renders it "Lord" five times, "Master" four times, and omits it twice, while Theodotion renders it uniformly "Lord" all eleven times. Further, in this chapter, "Elohim" with or without suffixes appears eleven times: the Septuagint renders it "God" eight times and "Lord" three times, while Theodotion renders it uniformly "God" all eleven times, and avoids the word "Master" (despotes), which by his time would have suggested the Roman emperor stripped of divine honours. Theodotion is thus scrupulous and consistent in rendering the divine names, while the Septuagint is irregular and careless of Jewish feeling on the subject; the same motive can be traced in Daniel ix. 26, where Theodotion avoids the Septuagint's use of "Christos" for the Hebrew "anointed one." The Hebrew of Susanna, as reflected in Theodotion, would similarly use "Adonai"; "heaven" for "God" in verses 9 and 35 is a similar evasion out of reverence.
In Susanna verses 44 and 62, the Septuagint refers to an angel, while Theodotion does not — likely due to inexact translation, since the Greek word for "angel" is used elsewhere in Daniel with some elasticity, and cannot bear the weight of an inference about differing angelologies. Theodotion also refers to an angel in verses 55 and 59; a Sadducee, who denied the existence of angels, would hardly have written such a text.
The story does not intend to teach anything new in theology. Its theism is incidental and generally accepted: the Law of Moses expresses the will of God, and his word condemns injustice. Belief in God makes Susanna prefer death to sinning against him; she trusts in God, who is not of one generation only, who perceives the causes of events, knows her innocence, answers her prayer, and inspires her deliverer. On the other hand, an error in theism is presented as the most deadly of errors: unbelief in God, veiled by hypocrisy, perverts the elders, leaves them a prey to passion, allows them deliberately to plan murder, and blinds them to the penalties of their conduct. Injustice is the fruit of atheism. That Susanna should represent the Messianic kingdom, Joakim and Helkias the God of Israel, and the elders the ungodly powers of the world, can hardly have been the intention of the author, whatever later allegorists (such as Scholz) have made of it. Allegory and apocalypse have come from students of the story, not from its author.
The History of Susanna
1 There dwelt a man in Babylon, and his name was Joakim: 2 and he took a wife, whose name was Susanna, the daughter of Helkias, a very fair woman, and one that feared the Lord. 3 Her parents also were righteous, and taught their daughter according to the law of Moses. 4 Now Joakim was a great rich man, and had a fair garden joining unto his house: and to him resorted the Jews; because he was more honourable than all others. 5 And the same year there were appointed two of the ancients of the people to be judges, such as the Lord spake of, that wickedness came from Babylon from ancient judges, who were accounted to govern the people.
6 These kept much at Joakim's house: and all that had any suits in law came unto them. 7 Now when the people departed away at noon, Susanna went into her husband's garden to walk. 8 And the two elders beheld her going in every day, and walking; and they were inflamed with love for her. 9 And they perverted their own mind, and turned away their eyes, that they might not look unto heaven, nor remember just judgements. 10 And albeit they both were wounded with her love, yet durst not one show another his grief. 11 For they were ashamed to declare their lust, that they desired to have to do with her. 12 Yet they watched jealously from day to day to see her.
13 And the one said to the other, Let us now go home: for it is dinner time. 14 So when they were gone out, they parted the one from the other, and turning back again they came to the same place; and after that they had asked one another the cause, they acknowledged their lust: and then appointed they a time both together, when they might find her alone.
15 And it fell out, as they watched a fit day, she went in as aforetime with two maids only, and she was desirous to wash herself in the garden: for it was hot. 16 And there was nobody there save the two elders, that had hid themselves, and watched her.
17 Then she said to her maids, Bring me oil and washing balls, and shut the garden doors, that I may wash me. 18 And they did as she bade them, and shut the garden doors, and went out themselves at the side doors to fetch the things that she had commanded them: and they saw not the elders, because they were hid.
19 Now when the maids were gone forth, the two elders rose up, and ran unto her, saying, 20 Behold, the garden doors are shut, that no man can see us, and we are in love with thee; therefore consent unto us, and lie with us. 21 If thou wilt not, we will bear witness against thee, that a young man was with thee: and therefore thou didst send away thy maids from thee.
22 Susanna sighed, and said, I am straitened on every side: for if I do this thing, it is death unto me: and if I do it not, I cannot escape your hands. 23 It is better for me to fall into your hands, and not do it, than to sin in the sight of the Lord. 24 With that Susanna cried with a loud voice: and the two elders cried out against her. 25 Then ran the one, and opened the garden doors.
26 So when the servants of the house heard the cry in the garden, they rushed in at the side door, to see what had befallen her. 27 But when the elders had told their tale, the servants were greatly ashamed: for there was never such a report made of Susanna.
28 And it came to pass on the morrow, when the people assembled to her husband Joakim, the two elders came full of their wicked intent against Susanna to put her to death: 29 and said before the people, Send for Susanna, the daughter of Helkias, Joakim's wife. So they sent; 30 and she came with her father and mother, her children, and all her kindred. 31 Now Susanna was a very delicate woman, and beauteous to behold.
32 And these wicked men commanded her to be unveiled (for she was veiled) that they might be filled with her beauty. 33 Therefore her friends and all that saw her wept. 34 Then the two elders stood up in the midst of the people, and laid their hands upon her head. 35 And she weeping looked up toward heaven: for her heart trusted in the Lord.
36 And the elders said, As we walked in the garden alone, this woman came in with two maids, and shut the garden doors, and sent the maids away. 37 Then a young man, who there was hid, came unto her, and lay with her. 38 And we, being in a corner of the garden, saw this wickedness, and ran unto them. 39 And when we saw them together, the man we could not hold; for he was stronger than we, and opened the doors, and leaped out. 40 But having taken this woman, we asked who the young man was, but she would not tell us: these things do we testify. 41 Then the assembly believed them, as those that were elders of the people and judges: so they condemned her to death.
42 Then Susanna cried out with a loud voice, and said, O everlasting God, that knowest the secrets, that knowest all things before they be: 43 thou knowest that they have borne false witness against me, and, behold, I must die; whereas I never did such things as these men have maliciously invented against me.
44 And the Lord heard her voice. 45 Therefore when she was led away to be put to death, God raised up the holy spirit of a young youth, whose name was Daniel: 46 and he cried with a loud voice, I am clear from the blood of this woman. 47 Then all the people turned them toward him, and said, What mean these words that thou hast spoken? 48 So he standing in the midst of them said, Are ye such fools, ye sons of Israel, that without examination or knowledge of the truth ye have condemned a daughter of Israel? 49 Return again to the place of judgement: for these have borne false witness against her.
50 Wherefore all the people turned again in haste, and the elders said unto him, Come, sit down among us, and show it us, seeing God hath given thee the honour of an elder. 51 Then said Daniel unto them, Put them asunder one far from another, and I will examine them. 52 So when they were put asunder one from another, he called one of them, and said unto him, O thou that art waxen old in wickedness, now are thy sins come home to thee which thou hast committed aforetime, 53 in pronouncing unjust judgement, and condemning the innocent, and letting the guilty go free; albeit the Lord saith, The innocent and righteous shalt thou not slay. 54 Now then, if thou sawest her, tell me, Under what tree sawest thou them companying together? Who answered, Under a mastick tree. 55 And Daniel said, Right well hast thou lied against thine own head; for even now the angel of God hath received the sentence of God and shall cut thee in two.
56 So he put him aside, and commanded to bring the other, and said unto him, O thou seed of Canaan, and not of Judah, beauty hath deceived thee, and lust hath perverted thine heart. 57 Thus have ye dealt with the daughters of Israel, and they for fear companied with you: but the daughter of Judah would not abide your wickedness. 58 Now therefore tell me, Under what tree didst thou take them companying together? Who answered, Under a holm tree. 59 Then said Daniel unto him, Right well hast thou also lied against thine own head: for the angel of God waiteth with the sword to cut thee in two, that he may destroy you.
60 With that all the assembly cried out with a loud voice, and blessed God, who saveth them that hope in him. 61 And they arose against the two elders, for Daniel had convicted them of false witness out of their own mouth: 62 and according to the law of Moses they did unto them in such sort as they maliciously intended to do to their neighbour: and they put them to death, and the innocent blood was saved the same day.
63 Therefore Helkias and his wife praised God for their daughter Susanna, with Joakim her husband, and all the kindred, because there was no dishonesty found in her. 64 And from that day forth was Daniel had in great reputation in the sight of the people.
Colophon
Prepared from R. H. Charles (ed.), The Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha of the Old Testament in English, Vol. 1: Apocrypha (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1913), translation and introduction by D. M. Kay. Source: archive.org item apocryphapseudep01charuoft (University of Toronto copy).
The translation reproduced here is the continuous, single-numbered text Kay presents as "The History of Susanna" — his revision of the Revised Version rendering of Theodotion's Greek — which runs unbroken from verse 1 to verse 64. Charles's page also prints, for comparison, a short parallel excerpt of the older Septuagint recension covering roughly the same opening verses (a distinct, differently worded and differently numbered text); that comparative excerpt is not reproduced here, since it is a second, secondary version rather than part of the continuous 64-verse translation. This edition's dense per-verse textual-critical apparatus — the running notes comparing Septuagint and Theodotion Greek, Hebrew and Syriac manuscript readings, and versional variants — is likewise omitted from this transcription; both the apparatus and the Septuagint excerpt survive complete in the 1913 printed edition and in the cited scan. The introduction's purely mechanical "§ 10. Bibliography" list of editions and secondary literature is also omitted; all discursive explanatory content from the introduction is retained. No words of the translation text itself were illegible in the scan.
Prepared for the Good Work Library by the New Tianmu Anglican Church with AI-assisted transcription and editorial work.
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