Susanna, Bel and the Dragon

Introduction

There is a peculiar kind of excitement that comes from discovering that something you thought you knew is, in fact, far larger and stranger than you had imagined. Most people who have encountered the Book of Daniel know it as one of the most dramatic texts in the entire biblical canon — a book filled with lions' dens and fiery furnaces, with apocalyptic visions and the writing on the wall, with a young man of extraordinary faith navigating the treacherous corridors of Babylonian power. It is a book that has fired the imagination of readers, painters, theologians, and dreamers for more than two thousand years. And yet, for the majority of modern readers raised in Protestant or secular traditions, the Daniel they know is incomplete. Hidden in plain sight, preserved in ancient manuscripts, venerated by hundreds of millions of Christians across the world, and yet somehow absent from the Bibles sitting on most Western bookshelves, there exist additional chapters — older in some respects, richer in others, and absolutely riveting in their own right.

The three texts gathered in this volume — the story of Susanna, and the two episodes collectively known as Bel and the Dragon — represent some of the most compelling and underappreciated literature to survive from the ancient world. They are not footnotes. They are not theological afterthoughts or pious embellishments tacked on by medieval scribes with too much time on their hands. They are full-blooded narratives, tightly constructed, morally sophisticated, and in many ways surprisingly modern in their concerns. One is a courtroom thriller that pivots on the abuse of power and the courage of a single woman. Another is a satirical demolition of idol worship that reads almost like a detective story. The third is a tale of miraculous survival that manages to be both deeply reverent and darkly comic. Together, they form a remarkable triptych — three windows into a world where faith is tested not in the abstract but in the most immediate and dangerous of circumstances.

To understand why these texts are unfamiliar to so many readers, you need to understand something about the long and complicated history of the biblical canon — that is, the process by which certain texts came to be included in the Bible and others did not. This is not a simple story of divine selection, nor is it a story of cynical exclusion. It is, rather, a story of communities, languages, manuscripts, and centuries of debate. The three stories in this book were included in the Septuagint, the ancient Greek translation of the Hebrew scriptures that became the standard Bible of early Christianity. They were quoted by the Church Fathers, incorporated into the Latin Vulgate translation produced by Jerome in the late fourth century, and from there passed into the official canon of the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches, where they remain to this day. When the Protestant Reformers of the sixteenth century returned to the Hebrew text of the Old Testament as their canonical standard — and found that these stories existed only in Greek — they reclassified them as Apocrypha, meaning texts that were valuable for reading but not authoritative for doctrine. And so, gradually, they slipped out of the Protestant Bible and out of the awareness of the vast majority of English-speaking readers.

The word 'apocrypha' itself deserves a moment's reflection, because it carries a weight of misunderstanding that has done these texts no favors. In popular usage, 'apocryphal' has come to mean something like 'probably not true' or 'of dubious origin' — we speak of apocryphal stories about famous people meaning stories that are almost certainly invented. But the word's original meaning is simply 'hidden' or 'concealed,' and in early Christian usage it referred to texts that were kept back from general circulation, reserved for the more spiritually advanced. Later it came to denote texts that were read publicly but not used as the basis for doctrine. Neither sense implies fabrication or worthlessness. These are ancient texts with ancient roots, and the questions of their historical origins are genuinely fascinating, as we shall explore. But more than anything, they are stories — and they deserve to be encountered first and foremost as the extraordinary stories they are.

What makes these particular texts so compelling to the modern reader? Partly it is their sheer narrative quality. Whoever composed them — and the question of authorship is complex and contested — they were gifted storytellers. The story of Susanna, for instance, is constructed with a precision that would do credit to any modern thriller writer. The setup is economical and efficient: a beautiful, virtuous woman, a garden, two corrupt judges who desire her, a trap, a false accusation, and a death sentence that seems inevitable. The tension is expertly managed. The reversal, when it comes, is both surprising and completely satisfying. And the moral dimensions of the story — the abuse of authority, the silencing of women, the courage required to maintain integrity under pressure — are not merely ancient concerns. They speak directly to our own moment in ways that are sometimes startling.

The Bel and Dragon narratives work differently but are equally gripping. They have a quality that is harder to name — something between comedy and adventure, between philosophical argument and action story. In the first episode, Daniel exposes the fraud of a supposedly living idol with a trick that is so simple and clever it makes you want to laugh out loud. In the second, he destroys a creature worshipped as a god using nothing more than pitch, fat, and hair — a recipe that is simultaneously grotesque and hilarious. These are not solemn theological treatises. They are lively, irreverent, and enormously entertaining. And yet beneath their surface energy runs a current of serious thought about the nature of divinity, the difference between true and false religion, and the courage required to speak truth to power when the stakes are literally mortal.

It is worth pausing here to consider the figure of Daniel himself, because these additional chapters both deepen and complicate the portrait we receive in the canonical book. In the standard text, Daniel is primarily a visionary — a man of dreams and interpretations, a figure who stands at the intersection of the human and the divine, receiving and decoding messages from God. He is remarkable, but he is also somewhat remote, a figure of almost superhuman spiritual gifts. In the stories gathered here, Daniel is something different: he is a detective, an advocate, a man of sharp practical intelligence as well as deep faith. He reasons, he observes, he sets traps, he argues. He is someone you could imagine sitting across a table from, someone whose mind you can follow and admire. This Daniel is not less holy than the canonical Daniel — but he is more human, and in some ways more inspiring for it.

The story of Susanna, it should be noted, occupies a unique position in this collection because Daniel himself appears only at the end, and the heart of the narrative belongs entirely to a woman. Susanna is one of the most fully realized female characters in ancient religious literature — not a symbol, not a type, but a person with an inner life, with courage and anguish and dignity. Her situation is one of almost unbearable injustice: she is falsely accused by men who hold all the social power, and the community believes them rather than her. Her response is not passive resignation but active prayer — a direct, personal appeal to God that is one of the most moving passages in the entire apocryphal literature. And God answers, sending Daniel to her rescue in a scene that is both dramatically satisfying and theologically rich. Susanna's story is, among other things, a story about what it means to be believed, and what it costs to be disbelieved, and those themes resonate with a force that crosses every cultural and historical boundary.

Before we go any further into the world of these texts, it is worth spending a moment with the question of their origins, because it is genuinely interesting and because it illuminates the texts themselves. Scholars have debated for centuries whether the stories were originally composed in Hebrew or Aramaic and later translated into Greek, or whether they were composed in Greek from the beginning. The question matters because it bears on how we understand their relationship to the rest of the Daniel tradition. The discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls in the mid-twentieth century added new complexity to the discussion, providing evidence of a rich and varied Daniel tradition in the Jewish world of the Second Temple period. What seems clear is that these stories circulated in Jewish communities before they were adopted by Christians, and that they reflect concerns and debates that were very much alive in the world that produced them — concerns about the seductions of foreign religion, about the integrity of the legal system, about the survival of Jewish identity under imperial pressure.

The Babylonian setting of all three stories is significant. Like the canonical Daniel, these narratives are set in the period of the Babylonian exile, when the Jewish people found themselves living as a minority community under foreign rule, navigating between the demands of their own faith and the pressures of the dominant culture. This setting gave the stories immediate resonance for their original audiences, many of whom faced analogous situations under Greek or Roman rule. But the setting also gives them a kind of timeless quality, because the situation they describe — how do you maintain integrity and identity when the surrounding culture is powerful and seductive and hostile? — is one that human beings have faced in every age and will continue to face. The Babylonian backdrop is ancient, but the questions it frames are permanent.

One of the great pleasures of reading these texts alongside the canonical Daniel is the way they illuminate each other. Themes that appear in the main book — the testing of faith, the power of prayer, the ultimate accountability of earthly rulers to divine justice — are explored here from different angles and in different registers. The canonical book tends toward the cosmic and the apocalyptic; these stories tend toward the intimate and the immediate. Together, they suggest a tradition that was genuinely diverse in its modes and approaches, that could move from visionary grandeur to courtroom drama to satirical comedy without losing its essential coherence. That coherence is not primarily doctrinal but moral and imaginative: these are stories about what it looks like to live faithfully in a world that is often unfaithful, to hold onto truth in a world that is often dishonest, to trust in justice in a world where justice is often perverted.

Chapter 1

There was a man living in Babylon whose name was Joacim.

He had married a wife named Susanna, the daughter of Chelcias, a very beautiful woman who feared the Lord.

Her parents were righteous people who had raised their daughter according to the law of Moses.

Joacim was a man of great wealth, and he had a fine garden adjoining his house. The Jews would gather there to meet with him, for he was held in higher honor than any other man among them.

That same year, two of the elders of the people were appointed as judges — men of the kind the Lord had in mind when he said that lawlessness had come out of Babylon from judges who were supposed to govern the people.

These men spent much of their time at Joacim's house, and all who had legal disputes would come to them there.

When the people left at midday, Susanna would go out to walk in her husband's garden.

The two elders watched her come in and walk there every day, and their desire for her was inflamed.

They let their minds become corrupt and turned their eyes away from heaven, forgetting that just judgment is God's concern.

Both of them were consumed with longing for her, yet neither dared reveal his torment to the other.

They were too ashamed to admit the desire they felt — that they wanted to be with her.

Still, day after day they watched eagerly for a chance to see her.

One day one said to the other, "Let us go home now, for it is time to eat."

They left together, but then parted and each turned back separately, arriving at the same spot. When they questioned each other about why they had returned, they confessed their desire for Susanna, and together they agreed on a time when they might find her alone.

As they waited for the right moment, she came in as usual with only two maidservants. It was a hot day, and she wished to bathe in the garden.

No one else was there except the two elders, who had hidden themselves and were watching her.

She said to her maids, "Bring me oil and soap, and shut the garden gates so that I may bathe."

They did as she asked, shut the garden gates, and went out by the side doors to fetch what she had asked for. They did not see the elders, because the elders were hidden.

As soon as the maids had gone, the two elders sprang up and ran to Susanna, saying,

"Look — the garden gates are shut and no one can see us. We are burning with desire for you. Give in to us and lie with us.

If you refuse, we will testify against you that a young man was here with you, and that is why you sent your maids away."

Susanna groaned and said, "I am trapped on every side. If I do this, it means death for me; and if I refuse, I cannot escape your hands.

Yet it is better for me to fall into your hands without doing it than to sin in the sight of the Lord."

Then Susanna screamed as loud as she could, and the two elders shouted accusations against her.

One of them ran and threw open the garden gates.

When the servants in the house heard the commotion in the garden, they rushed in through the side doors to see what had happened to her.

When the elders told their story, the servants were deeply shocked, for nothing of this kind had ever been said about Susanna before.

The next day, when the people gathered at the house of her husband Joacim, the two elders arrived filled with their wicked scheme to have Susanna put to death.

They said before all the people, "Send for Susanna, the daughter of Chelcias, the wife of Joacim." And so they sent for her.

She came with her father and mother, her children, and all her relatives.

Susanna was a woman of great refinement and beauty.

The wicked men ordered that her face be unveiled — for she had come veiled — so that they might feast their eyes on her beauty.

Her family and all who saw her wept.

Then the two elders stood up before the assembly and laid their hands on her head.

She wept and looked up toward heaven, for her heart trusted in the Lord.

The elders said, "While we were walking alone in the garden, this woman came in with two maids. She shut the garden gates and dismissed the maids.

Then a young man who had been hiding there came to her and lay with her.

We were standing in a corner of the garden, and when we saw this wickedness we ran toward them.

We saw them together, but the man we could not hold — he was stronger than us, and he forced the gate open and fled.

We seized this woman and demanded to know who the young man was, but she refused to tell us. This is our testimony."

The assembly believed them, since they were elders and judges of the people, and Susanna was condemned to death.

Then Susanna cried out with a loud voice and said, "O eternal God, you know all secrets and see everything before it happens.

You know that these men have given false testimony against me. And now I must die, though I have done none of the things they have so wickedly invented against me."

And the Lord heard her cry.

As she was being led away to her death, the Lord stirred up the holy spirit of a young man named Daniel.

He cried out in a loud voice, "I am innocent of this woman's blood!"

All the people turned toward him and asked, "What do you mean by those words?"

He stood among them and said, "Are you such fools, you sons of Israel? Have you condemned a daughter of Israel without examination, without even establishing the truth?

Go back to the place of judgment — these men have given false testimony against her."

The whole assembly hurried back, and the elders said to Daniel, "Come, sit among us and speak, for God has given you the standing of an elder."

Daniel said to them, "Separate these two men from each other, and I will question them."

When they had been separated, he called one of them over and said, "You who have grown old in wickedness — now the sins you have committed in the past have finally caught up with you.

You have pronounced false judgment. You have condemned the innocent and let the guilty go free, even though the Lord says, "The innocent and the righteous you shall not put to death."

Now then, since you claim to have seen her, tell me: under what tree did you see them together? He answered, "Under a mastic tree."

Daniel said, "Well said — you have lied against your own head. The angel of God has already received God's sentence and will cut you in two."

He had him taken aside and ordered the other elder to be brought forward. He said to him, "You offspring of Canaan, not of Judah — beauty has deceived you and lust has corrupted your heart.

This is how you have dealt with the daughters of Israel, and they, out of fear, gave in to you. But the daughter of Judah would not endure your wickedness.

Now tell me: under what tree did you catch them together?" He answered, "Under a holm oak."

Daniel said to him, "Well said — you too have lied against your own head. The angel of God is waiting with his sword to cut you in two and destroy you."

At that, the whole assembly cried out with a loud voice and praised God, who saves those who put their trust in him.

They rose up against the two elders, for Daniel had convicted them out of their own mouths of giving false testimony.

According to the law of Moses, they did to those men exactly what those men had wickedly plotted to do to their neighbor, and they put them to death. That same day, innocent blood was saved.

Chelcias and his wife praised God for their daughter Susanna, as did her husband Joakim and all her family, because no shameful thing had been found in her.

From that day forward, Daniel was held in great honor in the eyes of the people.