SUSANNA

INTRODUCTION

§ 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 LXX. The story circulated independently, and was sometimes associated with the name of Habakkuk. The LXX before the Christian era placed it in an appendix to Daniel; Theodotion and the Uncials, in the interests of chronology, make Susanna the opening chapter of Daniel. The Hebrew MSS. now extant have no claim to be considered the original of the Greek versions.

§ 2. TITLE

In the earliest MSS. the story has no name, being part of Δανιηλ Β Α; Δανιηλ κατα του Θεοδοτιωνος Q. In Codex Chisianus, LXX Dan. is entitled Δανιηλ κατα τους Ο͂. This title is repeated at the end of Dan. 12; Dan. 13 is headed Σουσαννα. Codex Chisianus gives Theodotion’s version under the curious title το ειρ αγρυπνος Δανιηλ, Susanna being c. 13; c. 14, which follows, has the superscription ἐκ προφητείας Ἁμβακοὺμ υἱοῦ Ἰησοῦ ἐκ τῆς Φυλῆς Λευί. The Syriac Hexapla makes the latter title include Susanna. A codex from Athos: ὁράσεις (l. ὅρασις?) ἕνδεκα τοῦ προφήτου Δανιήλ deinde sequitur περὶ τοῦ Ἁββακούμ. His omnibus praemittitur περὶ τῆς Συσάννης.1 Another Greek title is Διακρισις Δανιηλ.2

Syriac Versions ܬܫܥܝܬܐ ܕܫܘܫܢ. History of Shushan Pesh., Lag. 1; ܟܬܒܐ ܕܫܘܫܢ ܛܘܒܝܬܐ Lag. 2; ‘the book of the youthful Daniel, the history of Shushan ܡܦܩܬܐ ܚܪܩܠܝܬܐ Harkleensian edition; ‘Book of the Women’ (i.e. Susanna, Judith, Ruth, Esther) in Bible of Jacobite Syrians.

The Vulgate places Daniel between Ezekiel and Hosea as ‘propheteia Danielis’, Susanna being c. 13.

The Arabic version has 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. τὸ δρᾶμα τῆς Σωσαννίδος, Nicolas (of Damascus?); ‘Pistill (epistle) of Swete Susan’, Scots poems of the fourteenth century.

The position in which Susanna is inserted is variable. It precedes the canonical Daniel in B A Q Old Latin and Copto-Memphitic Versions; it is appended after Dan. 12 in LXX, Syro-tetraplar Version of LXX, 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 MSS

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 Dan. 12 says it was copied from an exemplar with this subscription: ἔγραφη ἐκ τῶν τετραπλῶν ἐξ ὧν καὶ παρετέθη. Its text is thus only once removed from the recension of the LXX 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. The LXX text from Origen’s Hexapla is rendered literally into Syriac. The agreement of Chisianus with the Syro-Hexaplar gives assurance for the LXX 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 LXX. It has thus all the MS. evidence available for the Greek Daniel in the Church Bible, and is found in Codex Vaticanus B, Codex Alexandrinus A, and in Cod. Marchalianus Q, sixth century. The text here used is that of Swete, vol. 3.

Among MSS. two in Hebrew require notice, because the question of a Semitic original is much discussed, and because one of these MSS. has been supposed to contain the Semitic original of certain apocryphal books.1

In Bodley’s Library at Oxford is a MS. (Heb. d. 11, Catalogue No. 2797) called Sepher haz-Zikhronoth, compiled by Asher hal-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 Yerạmeel, … the Aramaic text of the Song of the Three Children, the history of Bel and the Dragon in Syriac in Hebrew characters without a Hebrew translation. In fol. 74 b begins the Midrash concerning Ahab and Zedekiah (Jer. 29:21). Fol. 75 a and 75 b contain the Story of Susanna in Hebrew, occupying fifty-three lines. A later hand has headed the page: מעשה שושנה בימי רניאל. The story itself begins a new paragraph headed זה מעשה שושנה. 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. Has this Hebrew text any claim to be considered the original of the LXX and Theodotion? The Greek versions have some thirty verses nearly identical; in these passages this MS. 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 in LXX and Theodotion. The language is in parts a fair imitation of Biblical Hebrew: in other parts it is not; e.g. v. 23 θ´ fol. 75, l. 18, צבאות שמו׳ קזח לאג עישומו ליצם ארונהו רוביגה לודגה בוטהו קידצה דיב הלופאו יל בטום; fol. 76, l. 29, a supplement to θ´ v. 59 שאין בגן לא זה אילן ולא זה אילן והלכו וראו האמת; for הִנֵּה we find הרי three times; for ‘thereupon’ מיר with a Perf. three times; twice there appears גינת הביתו for ‘the garden of his house’. The compiler of the MS. evidently knew Syriac, and may have carelessly followed some Syriac version in writing the story for the amusement of his heirs male. His object appears in his preface: ‘Blessed be my descendants, and may they be established if they fulfil my wishes.’

The second Hebrew MS. is also in the Bodleian (Heb. MS. e. 12, Catal. No. 2777). The volume, with which the leaf containing Susanna is bound up, contains hymns, astronomical tables, &c., disorderly arranged. The copyist of fol. 3 signs himself Mordecai ben Samuel, and finished his work a.d. 1691. A note on f. 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 MS. d. 11. Yet here too we have a version. The writer has not understood v. 5, yet has tried to be faithful to the obscurity of the Greek. מבבל מהשופטים הראשונים ויקומו שופטים אחרים וילכו אחרי ה֗ À ונעשז אז באותו הזמן שני כהנים ברצון ה֗ שופטים כי סר העון [העון. Again, in v. 15 he has failed to recognize the Greek form of כִּתְמוֹל שִׁלְשֹׁם and renders: ויהי כראותם אותה בכל יום קרה ביום השלישי ורצתה לילך עם שתי נערוּת לרחוץ עצמה … In v. 18 he ignores the gender in the verbs; περιπατούντων ἡμῶν = כשהלכנו v. 36; the comparative he renders by יותר, ἐνδοξότερον = יותר נכבד v. 4; αἱρετόν μοι = יותר טוב. That he used Theodotion and not the Vulgate appears to follow from his treatment of v. 22: καὶ ἀνεστέναξεν Σ. καὶ εἶπεν Στενά μοι πάντοθεν = ותאנח שושנה ותאמר אנחה תהיה לי. Here he reproduces the repetition of the sound. He ignores the play on the names of the trees.

These two…