Susanna and the Hebrew Copies

Origen, to Africanus, a beloved brother in God the Father, through Jesus Christ his holy Child: greeting. [a]

Your letter has reached me, and from it I learn what you think of the Susanna that stands in the book of Daniel and is read in the churches. The letter looks short, but its few words raise a great many problems, and not one of them can be handled casually. Each needs treatment that goes well past what a letter can carry and reaches the length of a full discourse.

And when I take the measure of my own mind as honestly as I can — for I want to know myself — I am aware that I lack the exactness your letter calls for. All the more so because the few days I have spent at Nicomedia have been nowhere near enough for me to answer everything you ask and press me on, even in the manner of this present letter. So forgive my small ability and the little time I had, and read what follows with every allowance, filling in whatever I leave out.

You begin by saying that when I was arguing with our friend Bassus I used the passage of Scripture that contains Daniel’s prophecy while he was still a young man, in the affair of Susanna, and that I did it as though it had slipped my mind that this part of the book is not genuine. You say you praise the passage as elegantly written, but you fault it as a later composition and a forgery. And you add that whoever forged it fell back on a trick that not even Philistion the comic playwright would have used: the puns between prinos and prisein, schinos and schisis — words that can be played on this way as they sound in Greek, but not in Hebrew. [c]

In answer I have to tell you what we ought to do — and not only in the case of the History of Susanna, which is found in every church of Christ in the Greek copy the Greeks use, but is not in the Hebrew; nor only in the case of the two other passages you mention at the end of the book, the story of Bel and the Dragon, which likewise are not in the Hebrew copy of Daniel; but in the case of thousands of other passages as well, which I found in many places when, with my small strength, I was collating the Hebrew copies against ours.

For in Daniel itself I found the word “bound” followed in our versions by a great many verses that are not in the Hebrew at all. In one of the copies that circulate in the churches they begin, “Hananiah and Azariah and Mishael prayed and sang to God,” and run down to “All you who worship the Lord, bless the God of gods. Praise him, and say that his mercy lasts forever and ever. And when the king heard them singing, and saw that they were alive.” In another copy they run from “And they walked in the middle of the fire, praising God and blessing the Lord,” down to “All you who worship the Lord, bless the God of gods. Praise him, and say that his mercy lasts to all generations.”

But in the Hebrew copies the words “And these three men, Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego, fell down bound into the middle of the fire” are followed at once by the verse “Nebuchadnezzar the king was astonished, and rose up in haste, and spoke, and said to his counselors.” That is how Aquila gives it, following the Hebrew reading. Among the Jews he has the reputation of having translated the Scriptures with unusual care, and his version is the one most commonly used by people who do not know Hebrew, as the one that has been most successful. Of the copies I have, whose readings I quoted, one follows the Seventy and the other Theodotion; and just as the History of Susanna, which you call a forgery, is found in both, along with the passages at the end of Daniel, so both also give these passages — more than two hundred verses, at a rough guess.

And in many other of the sacred books I found sometimes more in our copies than in the Hebrew, sometimes less. I will give a few examples, since it is impossible to give them all. In the book of Esther, neither Mordecai’s prayer nor Esther’s is in the Hebrew, though both do a reader good. Neither are the letters: not the one written to Haman about uprooting the Jewish nation, nor the one Mordecai wrote in the name of Artaxerxes, delivering the nation from death. [h]

Then in Job, the words from “It is written that he will rise again with those whom the Lord raises” to the end of the book are not in the Hebrew, and so not in Aquila’s edition, while they are in the Septuagint and in Theodotion’s version, which agree with each other at least in sense. And I found many other places in Job where our copies have more than the Hebrew ones, sometimes a little more and sometimes a great deal more. A little more, as when to the words “Rising in the morning, he offered sacrifices for them according to their number” they add “one calf for the sin of their souls”; and to the words “The angels of God came to present themselves before God, and the devil came with them” they add “from going to and fro on the earth, and from walking up and down in it.” Again, after “The LORD gave, the LORD has taken away,” the Hebrew does not have “It happened just as it seemed good to the Lord.” And our copies are a great deal fuller than the Hebrew where Job’s wife speaks to him, from “How long will you hold out? And he said: Look, I am waiting a little longer, looking for the hope of my rescue,” down to “so that I may be free of my troubles and the sorrows that hem me in.” For the Hebrew has only these words from the woman: “Say a word against God, and die.”

Again, all through Job there are many passages in the Hebrew that are missing from our copies — generally four or three verses, but sometimes as many as fourteen, or nineteen, or sixteen. But why should I list every instance I gathered with so much labor, only to prove that the difference between our copies and the Jews’ did not escape me? In Jeremiah I noticed many, and in that book especially I found a great deal of transposition, and variation in the readings of the prophecies. Again, in Genesis, the words “God saw that it was good,” said at the making of the firmament, are not in the Hebrew, and there is no small dispute among them about it. Other instances turn up in Genesis too, and for the sake of marking the difference I flagged them with the sign the Greeks call an obelisk, as on the other hand I marked with an asterisk those passages in our copies that are not found in the Hebrew. [k]

What need is there to speak of Exodus, where there is such variety in what is said about the tabernacle and its court, and the ark, and the garments of the high priest and the priests, that sometimes the meaning does not even seem related? And so, when we notice things like this, are we straightaway to reject as spurious the copies in use in our churches, and order our fellow believers to put away the sacred books they have among them, and coax the Jews, and persuade them to give us copies that are untampered with and free of forgery? Are we to suppose that the Providence which in the sacred Scriptures has served to build up all the churches of Christ took no thought for those who were bought with a price, for whom Christ died — those for whom God, who is love, did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all, so that along with him he might freely give us everything?

In all these cases, consider whether it would not be well to remember the words, “Do not move the ancient landmarks your fathers set up.” And I do not say this because I shirk the work of investigating the Jewish Scriptures, comparing them with ours, and noting where their readings differ. If it is not arrogant to say so, I have already done that to a great extent, as far as I was able, working hard to get at the meaning in all the editions and the various readings. [m]

I paid particular attention to the version of the Seventy, so that I might not be found crediting any forgery to the churches under heaven, and so give an opening to people who are hunting for one, who would gladly slander our common brothers and bring some charge against those who shine out in our community. And I make it my business not to be ignorant of their various readings, so that in my arguments with the Jews I may not quote to them what is not in their copies, and so that I may make some use of what is there, even when it is not in our Scriptures. If we come to the discussion prepared in that way, they will not do what they usually do and laugh scornfully at Gentile believers for not knowing the true readings as they have them. So much for the History of Susanna not being found in the Hebrew.

Now let us look at what you find fault with in the story itself. And let us begin with what would most likely make anyone unwilling to receive the history — I mean the play on words between prinos and prisis, schinos and schisis. You say you can see how it works in Greek, but that in Hebrew the words are altogether unlike each other. On this point, however, I am still in doubt. When I was working through the passage — for I saw the difficulty myself — I put the question to a good many Jews. I asked them the Hebrew words for prinos and prisein, and how they would translate the tree called schinos, and how schisis. They said they did not know these Greek words prinos and schinos, and asked me to show them the trees, so that they could see what they called them. So at once, for the truth’s dear sake, I set pieces of the different trees in front of them.

One of them then said that he could not give the Hebrew name of anything not mentioned in Scripture with any certainty, since it would be rash for a man who is at a loss to use the Syriac word instead of the Hebrew one; and he went on to say that even among the very wise some words are sometimes a matter of inquiry. “If, then, you can produce a passage in any Scripture where the schinos is mentioned, or the prinos, you will find there the words you are looking for, together with the words that have the same sound. But if it is nowhere mentioned, we do not know it either.” This, then, is what the Hebrews said to whom I went — men who knew the history. So I am cautious about affirming whether or not there is anything answering to this play on words in the Hebrew. Your own reason for affirming that there is not, you probably know.

What is more, I remember hearing the names of these elders from a learned Hebrew — said among his own people to be the son of a wise man, and to have been specially trained to succeed his father, a man I talked with on many subjects. He gave them exactly as though he did not reject the History of Susanna, and they occur in Jeremiah like this: “The LORD make you like Zedekiah and Ahab, whom the king of Babylon roasted in the fire, for the lawlessness they did in Israel.” [o]

How, then, could the one be sawn in two by an angel and the other split in two? The answer is that these things were prophesied not of this world, but of the judgment of God after the departure from this world. For the master of that wicked servant who says, “My master is taking his time in coming,” and then gives himself over to drunkenness, eating and drinking with drunkards and beating his fellow servants, will at his coming “cut him in two and assign him his portion with the unbelievers.” In just the same way the angels appointed to punish will carry these things out on these men — as they will cut in two the wicked steward of that passage — men who were called elders but who managed their stewardship wickedly. One will split in two the man grown old in wicked days, who had pronounced false judgment, condemning the innocent and letting the guilty go free; and another will saw in two the man of the seed of Canaan and not of Judah, whom beauty had deceived and whose craving had twisted his heart.

And I knew another Hebrew, who told such traditions about these elders as this: that they held out a promise to the Jews in captivity, who were hoping by the coming of Christ to be freed from the yoke of their enemies, that they could explain plainly the things concerning Christ. Each of them, separately, would tell any woman he came across and wanted to seduce, as if in secret, that it had been granted him by God to father the Christ. Deceived by the hope of bearing the Christ, the woman would give herself to the deceiver; and that is how the elders Ahab and Zedekiah committed adultery with the wives of their countrymen. That is why Daniel rightly calls the one “grown old in wicked days,” while the other hears: “This is how you dealt with the daughters of Israel, and they kept company with you out of fear; but a daughter of Judah would not put up with your lawlessness.” For deceit and fear, perhaps, both having power over women, made them give their bodies to these so-called elders. [q]

But to this you will probably say: then why is the History not in their Daniel, if, as you say, their wise men hand down stories like this by tradition? The answer is that they hid from the knowledge of the people as many of the passages as they could that carried any scandal against the elders, the rulers and the judges. Some of these have been preserved in writings outside the accepted books — the Apocrypha. Take, as an example, the story told about Isaiah, which the letter to the Hebrews vouches for, and which is found in none of their public books. For the writer of the letter to the Hebrews, speaking of the prophets and what they suffered, says, “They were stoned, they were sawn in two, they were killed with the sword.” To whom, I ask, does the “sawn in two” refer? For by an old idiom, not peculiar to Hebrew but found in Greek as well, this is said in the plural although it refers to only one person. Now we know very well that tradition says the prophet Isaiah was sawn in two; and this is found in some apocryphal work, which the Jews have probably tampered with on purpose, putting in phrases that are plainly wrong, so that the whole might be discredited. [s]

However, someone hard pressed by this argument may fall back on the opinion of those who reject this letter as not being Paul’s. Against them I must at some other time use other arguments to prove that it is Paul’s. For the present I will bring forward from the Gospel what Jesus Christ testifies about the prophets, together with a story he refers to that is not found in the Old Testament — since in that story too there is a scandal against unjust judges in Israel. Our Savior’s words run like this: “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! You build the tombs of the prophets and decorate the graves of the righteous, and you say, ‘If we had lived in the days of our fathers, we would not have taken part with them in the blood of the prophets.’ So you are witnesses against yourselves that you are the sons of those who killed the prophets. Fill up, then, the measure of your fathers. You snakes, you brood of vipers, how are you to escape the judgment of Gehenna? And so, look: I am sending you prophets and wise men and scribes; and some of them you will kill and crucify, and some of them you will flog in your synagogues and hound from city to city — so that on you may come all the righteous blood shed on the earth, from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah son of Barachiah, whom you murdered between the temple and the altar. I tell you the truth: all these things will come upon this generation.” And what follows is in the same vein: “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those who are sent to you! How often I wanted to gather your children together, the way a hen gathers her chicks under her wings — and you would not. Look, your house is left to you desolate.”

Now let us see whether in cases like these we are not forced to the conclusion that, while the Savior gives a true account of them, none of the Scriptures that would prove what he says are to be found. For the men who build the tombs of the prophets and decorate the graves of the righteous, condemning the crimes their fathers committed against the righteous and the prophets, say, “If we had lived in the days of our fathers, we would not have taken part with them in the blood of the prophets.” In the blood of what prophets, can anyone tell me? For where do we find anything like this written of Isaiah, or Jeremiah, or any of the Twelve, or Daniel? And as for Zechariah son of Barachiah, killed between the temple and the altar, we learn of him from Jesus only, and know it from no Scripture. So I think no other supposition is possible than this: the men who had the reputation for wisdom, and the rulers and the elders, took away from the people every passage that might bring them into disrepute among the people. We need not wonder, then, if this history of the licentious elders’ plot against Susanna is true, but was concealed and removed from the Scriptures by men themselves not very far removed from the mind of those elders.

In the Acts of the Apostles too, Stephen, in his own testimony, says: “Which of the prophets did your fathers not persecute? They killed those who announced beforehand the coming of the Just One, and now you have become his betrayers and murderers.” Everyone who accepts the Acts of the Apostles will grant that Stephen speaks the truth; but it is impossible to show from the surviving books of the Old Testament how he can with any justice lay the charge of persecuting and killing the prophets on the fathers of those who did not believe in Christ. And Paul, in the first letter to the Thessalonians, testifies this about the Jews: “For you, brothers, became imitators of the churches of God in Judea that are in Christ Jesus; you suffered the same things from your own countrymen as they did from the Jews, who killed both the Lord Jesus and their own prophets, and persecuted us; and they do not please God, and are hostile to everyone, hindering us from speaking to the Gentiles so that they may be saved.” What I have said is, I think, enough to prove that it would be nothing to wonder at if this history were true — if the licentious and cruel attack really was made on Susanna by the men who were elders at that time, and was written down by the wisdom of the Spirit, but removed by these “rulers of Sodom,” as the Spirit would call them.