§ 7. INFLUENCE OF THE BOOK ON LATER LITERATURE, CANONICITY, ETC.

As the ‘Addition’ was current in early times as part of the longer Daniel, it is difficult to know how far it was accepted as canonical. When Daniel is mentioned in a list of canonical works, there is usually nothing to show whether or no it includes our ‘Addition’. Its absence from the Massoretic edition of the Old Testament probably shows that the ‘Addition’ was not included in Daniel as it was received into the Palestinian Canon.

On the other hand, it was generally accepted in the early and mediaeval Christian Church, being included in the LXX, Latin, Syriac,1 Egyptian, Arabic, Ethiopian, and other versions. The ‘Additions’ to Daniel are freely used by the Greek and Latin Fathers;2 a Father who accepted Susanna and Bel and the Dragon would a fortiori accept the Prayer and the Song.

At the Reformation our ‘Addition’ shared the fate of the rest of the Apocrypha. The Roman Church kept it as an integral part of Daniel and of the Old Testament; the Reformed Churches took it out of Daniel and made it a separate Apocryphon.

Philo apparently makes no use of Daniel, and Josephus in his version of the incident of the Three Children and the Fiery Furnace, Ant. 10. 10. 5, entirely ignores this ‘Addition’.

Most of the parallels between the New Testament and the ‘Addition,’ are also parallels with the canonical Old Testament; and the two or three that remain may be mere coincidences. We may, however, note one. In verse 64 we have ‘spirits and souls of the righteous’;3 with which we may compare Heb. 12:23, ‘the spirits of just men,’4 and Apoc. 6:9, ‘I saw … the souls5 of them that had been slain for the word of God.’ But here there need be no literary connexion; moreover, in Wisdom of Solomon 3:1, we have ‘The souls of the righteous are in the hand of God’. Thus there is no sufficient evidence that the writers of the New Testament made use of this ‘Addition’.6

Verses 35–66 form the Benedicite which stands in the Morning Service of the Prayer Book as an alternative to the Te Deum. The S.P.C.K. Prayer-Book with Commentary states, ‘The rubric of 1549 directing its use during Lent was done away with in 1552, and there is now no special direction when it should be used. But it is still deemed more suitable for that season than the exultant strain of the Te Deum, and to those days when the Lessons relate to the wonders of creation.’7