SUSANNA AND THE PRE‐CHRISTIAN BOOK OF DANIEL: STRUCTURE AND MEANING¹

Abstract

The structure of the pre-Christian book of Daniel as newly edited in Palestine in the first century B.C. is coherent, often symmetrical, and meaningful and was the version used by Jesus and the early Christians. Origen's and Jerome's reordering of the fourteen-chapter book in conformity with the extant Hebrew, however, vitiated that structure. Susanna's account opened the pre-Christian Palestinian version. That account inaugurates the themes of wisdom and judgment and provides the restoration of right order within the community in exile, a restoration essential for what transpires thereafter. Her experience is the first of four holy ordeals placed symmetrically in the first half of the book and framing the book as a whole. Significantly, the two chapters of Daniel most quoted in the Gospels are the ones that open the two halves of the book: Susanna, and the first vision of Daniel. Those two chapters are linked thematically and by diction, including the pair of unique phrases '[one grown] ancient of evil days' and 'Ancient of Days'. Susanna exemplifies the experiences of the saints -suffering and then vindicated -and also, for the writers of the synoptic Gospels -the experiences of Jesus in his passion.

Millennia of legal content criteria of lies and truths: wisdom or common-sense folly?

“…In the 1st century AD, Roman orator and lawyer 2 Marcus Fabius Quintilianus gave some advice on how to lie successfully it is found as Chapter 13 in the Book of Daniel in the Vulgate, as well as in modern Catholic and Orthodox Bibles [https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Susanna_(Book_of_Daniel)]. For a history of the reception of the story and bibliographical details, see Tkacz (2008).…”