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By : Crawford Howell Toy
ARTICLE HEADINGS:
Origin.
Greek and Aramaic Texts.
Canonicity.
An Apocryphal tract,
placed, in the Septuagint and Theodotion, among the additions to the Book of
Daniel (see Apocrypha). It consists of two separate stories: one relating to
Bel; the other, to the Dragon. In the former, Daniel, by a clever device,
exposes the trick by which the priests of Bel made it appear that the idol
consumed the food and drink set before it. In the latter, Daniel slays the
Dragon-god by putting into its mouth cakes made of pitch, fat, and hair,
after eating which it bursts asunder. Daniel is thereupon cast into a den of
lions, but remains unharmed by the beasts, and is fed by the prophet
Habakkuk, who is miraculously brought from Judea for that purpose by an
angel.
Origin.
The purpose of the stories is to ridicule idol-worship, and to extol the
power of God, who preserves His faithful servants in all perils. The
material is drawn from current ideas and legends. Bel was the central figure
of the Babylonian idolatry (Isa. xlvi. 1; Jer. li. 44), and the Exile the
type of heroic struggle. The myth of the contest between God and the Dragon
(Tannin, Rahab, Leviathan) occurs throughout the old post-exilic literature
(Gunkel, "Schöpfung und Chaos"); and the way in which Daniel destroys the
Dragon is similar to that in which Marduk destroys Tiamat (Delitzsch, "Das
Babylonische Weltschöpfungsepos"; compare Nöldeke, "Geschichte des Artachsir
i Papakan," 1879, p. 55). Marduk drives a storm-wind into the dragon and
thus rends it asunder; and Marshall (in Hastings' "Dictionary of the Bible")
suggests that the "pitch" of the Greek (Aramean,
 )
may have come from an original term for "storm-wind" (Aramean,
 ).
How the prophet Habakkuk came to be introduced into the story is hardly
possible to explain (see Habakkuk). The title to the Septuagint text reads:
"From the prophecy of Habakkuk, the son of Jesus [Joshua], of the tribe of
Levi." There was in existence, probably, a work ascribed to Habakkuk; but of
its nature nothing is known. Legends relating to Daniel circulated,
doubtless, in a great variety of forms, and were constantly modified by
scribes. From such legends there are independent selections in Daniel and
Bel and the Dragon. The tone and contents of the latter work show that it
was not taken from Daniel.
Greek and Aramaic Texts.
The Greek work exists in two recensions, (1) that of the Septuagint and (2)
that of Theodotion, both of which are given, with various readings, in
Swete's "Old Testament in Greek." The two, though substantially identical,
differ in a number of details. Thus, in the Septuagint, besides the
reference to a prophecy of Habakkuk, Daniel is called a priest, the son of
Habal, and is introduced as a person previously unknown; while the name of
the king of Babylon, whose friend he was, is not given. In Theodotion the
king is Cyrus, who is said to be the successor of Astyages; Daniel is not
called a priest; and nothing is said of a prophecy of Habakkuk. The style of
the Septuagint is simpler and more Hebraic; Theodotion is fuller, more
dramatic, and more polished. It may be in part a revision of the Septuagint;
but it appears also to follow other authorities, or to be based on a
different version of the stories from that given in the Septuagint. The
question arises whether the Greek recensions are derived from other written
sources; that is, whether the stories were originally composedin Aramaic.
Aramaic forms of the legends do, in fact, exist. Raymund Martini (1250), in
his "Pugio Fidei" (at the end of the book), cites from a Midrash on Genesis
a part of what is contained in the Greek text. His accuracy has been called
in question, but Neubauer (in his "Tobit") gives, from a manuscript in the
Bodleian Library (the Midrash Rabba de Rabba) a Syriac text with which that
of Martini is identical, and a parallel extract from the Bereshit Rabbati.
From another manuscript in the same library, M. Gaster has published a text
of the Dragon story that confirms the correctness of Martini's quotation.
The Aramaic text of this manuscript is printed in the "Proceedings of the
Society of Biblical Archæology" for November and December, 1894; and the
English translation of a long paraphrase is given by Gaster in his
"Chronicles of Jerahmeel," 1899. In the Introduction to the latter work,
Gaster discusses the relations of "Jerahmeel" to "Yosippon," "Sefer ha-Yashar,"
and the "Antiquities" of Pseudo-Philo. The Jerahmeel Aramaic text is nearer
to Theodotion than to the Septuagint; though it sometimes accords with the
latter or with the I atin against other forms, and sometimes differs from
all others. But in the present state of knowledge it seems better to reserve
opinion as to its antiquity. Gaster thinks it is the text after which
Theodotion's version was revised, and Marshall regards it as ancient. The
occurrence of the stories in the Midrash makes it probable that there was an
Aramaic original; but it is not clear that this is preserved in the texts
cited. The fact that the Jerahmeel text agrees here and there with some one
of the ancient versions does not prove its originality; for in the course of
centuries various readings may have crept into it from sources unknown; thus
it has, in common with "Yosippon," the statement that Daniel put iron combs
into the cakes that he gave the Dragon—a natural embellishment of the story.
It is possible that some divergent readings in the two Greek recensions may
be explained as the result of the misunderstanding or misreading of Aramaic
terms. A few cases of this sort are suggested by Marshall, and they
undoubtedly go to show originality in the Aramaic text; but they are neither
clear enough nor numerous enough to be decisive.
Canonicity.
The booklet appears to have been regarded in Alexandria as belonging in the
class of sacred writings; but it was never so regarded by the Palestinian
Jewish leaders. It is quoted as the work of the prophet Daniel by Tertullian
and other early Christian writers, and its claim to canonicity is defended
by Origen ("Epistola ad Africanum"); it was not, however, formally accepted
as canonical by the early Church. In modern times it has been included among
the canonical books by the Roman and the Greek churches, and excluded by
Protestants. (k)
Bibliography: O. F. Fritzsche, Kurzgefasstes Exegetisches
Handbuch zu den Apocryphen des Alt. Testaments, 1851;
E. Reuss, La Bible, 1879;
idem, Das Alte Testament, Eingeleitet und Erläutert, Brunswick, 1894;
E. C. Bissell, Apocrypha of the Old Testament, 1880;
C. J. Ball, in H. Wace's Apocrypha, 1873-88;
E. Schürer, History of the Jewish People, etc., Eng. transl., 1891;
idem, in Herzog-Hauck, Real-Encyklopädie, i. 639 et seq.;
E. Kautzsch, Die Apokryphen und Pseudepigraphen des Alten Testaments, 1898,
i. 178, 189-193;
Delitzsch, De Habacuci Prophetœ Vita Atque Ætate, 1842;
Zunz, Die Gottesdienstlichen Vorträge, 2d ed., 1892;
A. Neubauer, The Book of Tobit, 1878.
The Greek text is given by Fritzsche (Libri Vet. Test. Pseudepigraphi
Selecti) and Swete; the Syriac by Walton, Lagarde, and Neubauer. See also
Gaster's works mentioned above.T.
Resource List - entry taken verbatim from the original source:
(k)
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