The Elders and the Two Trees

Your next objection is that in this piece Daniel is said to have been seized by the Spirit and to have cried out that the sentence was unjust, while in the book of his that everyone accepts he prophesies in quite a different way — by visions and dreams, and by an angel appearing to him, but never by prophetic inspiration. It seems to me that you are paying too little attention to the words, “At many times and in many ways God spoke long ago to the fathers through the prophets.” That is true not only in general but of individuals as well. If you look, you will find that the same holy men were given dreams from God, and appearances of angels, and direct inspirations too. For the moment it is enough to point to what is on record about Jacob. Of dreams from God he speaks this way: [a]

“It happened, at the time the flock was breeding, that I saw them before my eyes in a dream, and there were the rams and the male goats mounting the sheep and the goats — white-spotted and speckled and mottled. And the angel of God said to me in a dream, ‘Jacob.’ And I said, ‘What is it?’ And he said, ‘Lift up your eyes and see: the goats and rams mounting the goats and the sheep are white-spotted and speckled and mottled, for I have seen everything Laban is doing to you. I am God, who appeared to you at the place of God, where you anointed a pillar to me and made a vow to me. Now get up, leave this land, and go back to the land of your family.’”

And about an appearance, which is better than a dream, he speaks of himself as follows:

“And Jacob was left alone, and a man wrestled with him until daybreak. And he saw that he did not prevail against him, and he touched the broad part of his thigh; and the broad part of Jacob’s thigh went stiff while he was wrestling with him. And he said to him, ‘Let me go, for day is breaking.’ And he said, ‘I will not let you go unless you bless me.’ And he said to him, ‘What is your name?’ And he said, ‘Jacob.’ And he said to him, ‘Your name will no longer be called Jacob; Israel will be your name, for you have prevailed with God, and you are strong with men.’ And Jacob asked him and said, ‘Tell me your name.’ And he said, ‘Why do you ask my name?’ And he blessed him there. And Jacob called the name of the place Vision of God — ‘for I have seen God face to face, and my life was spared.’ And the sun rose as the vision of God passed by.”

And that he prophesied by inspiration as well is clear from this passage: “And Jacob called his sons and said, ‘Gather yourselves together, so that I may tell you what will happen to you in the last days. Gather yourselves together and hear, sons of Jacob; listen to Israel your father. Reuben, my firstborn, my strength and the beginning of my children — hard to bear, hard and stubborn. You were reckless; do not boil over like water. Because you went up onto your father’s bed, then you defiled the couch you went up onto.’” And so with the rest: those prophetic blessings were spoken by inspiration. So we need not be surprised that Daniel prophesied sometimes by inspiration, as when he rebuked the elders; sometimes, as you say, by dreams and visions; and at other times by an angel appearing to him.

Your remaining objections are put, it seems to me, somewhat irreverently, without the reverence such things deserve. I cannot do better than quote your own words: [e]

“Then, after crying out in that extraordinary way, he catches them out by a device no less unbelievable — one not even Philistion the writer of farces would have stooped to. Not content with rebuking them through the Spirit, he set them apart and asked each of them where he had seen her committing adultery. When the one said ‘under a holm oak’ (prinos), he answered that the angel would saw him in two (prisein); and he threatened the other in the same way — the one who said ‘under a mastic tree’ (schinos) — with being split in two (schisein).”

You could just as reasonably compare to Philistion the writer of farces a story rather like this one, which is found in the third book of Kings, a book you will grant yourself is well written. Here is what we read in Kings:

“Then two women who were prostitutes came before the king and stood in front of him. And the one woman said, ‘To me, my lord: this woman and I live in one house, and we both gave birth in the house. On the third day after I gave birth, this woman gave birth too. We were together; there is no one in our house except the two of us. And this woman’s child died in the night, because she lay on it. And she got up in the middle of the night and took my son from my arms. And your servant was asleep. And she laid him at her breast, and laid her dead child at my breast. And I got up in the morning to nurse my child, and he was dead; but when I looked at him closely in the morning, he was not the son I had borne.’ And the other woman said, ‘No: the dead one is your son, and the living one is my son.’ And the first said, ‘No: the living one is my son, and the dead one is your son.’ This is how they spoke before the king. Then the king said, ‘You say, “This is my son, the living one, and your son is the dead one”; and you say, “No, your son is the dead one and my son is the living one.”’ And the king said, ‘Bring me a sword.’ And they brought a sword before the king. And the king said, ‘Cut the living child in two and give half to the one and half to the other.’ Then the woman whose the living child was spoke to the king, because her heart was wrung for her son, and she said, ‘To me, my lord: give her the living child, and do not on any account kill it.’ But the other said, ‘Let it be neither mine nor yours; divide it.’ Then the king answered and said, ‘Give the child to the one who said, “Give her the living child, and do not on any account kill it,” for she is its mother.’ And all Israel heard of the judgment the king had judged, and they were afraid before the king, because they saw that the wisdom of God was in him to do judgment.”

For if we were free to talk about the Scriptures the churches use in that scoffing way, we would do better to compare this story of the two prostitutes to a play of Philistion than the story of the chaste Susanna. And just as the people would not have been convinced if Solomon had only said, “Give this one the living child, for she is its mother,” so Daniel’s attack on the elders would not have been enough without the condemnation added out of their own mouths, when both said they had seen her lying with the young man under a tree but did not agree about what kind of tree it was. And since you have asserted, as though you knew it for certain, that in this matter Daniel judged by inspiration — which may or may not have been so — I would have you notice that there seem to me to be some parallels between the story of Daniel and the judgment of Solomon, about whom Scripture testifies that the people saw that the wisdom of God was in him to do judgment. The same could be said of Daniel: it was because wisdom was in him to do judgment that the elders were judged in the way described.

I had nearly forgotten one more remark I have to make about the prinos–prisein and schinos–schisein difficulty. It is this: in our Scriptures there are many etymological fancies, if I may call them that, which work perfectly in Hebrew but not in Greek. So it need not surprise us if the translators of the History of Susanna managed it so that they found Greek words from one and the same root that either corresponded exactly to the Hebrew form (though I hardly think that possible) or bore some resemblance to it. [i]

Here is an instance of this in our Scripture. When the woman was made by God out of the man’s rib, Adam says, “She will be called woman, because she was taken out of her husband.” Now the Jews say that the woman was called essa, and that “taken” is a translation of that word — as is clear from chos isouoth essa, which means “I have taken the cup of salvation”; and that is means “man,” as we see from hesre ais, which is “Blessed is the man.” According to the Jews, then, is is “man” and essa is “woman,” because she was taken out of her husband (is). So it need not surprise us if some translators of the Hebrew Susanna — a text that had been kept out of sight among them from a very remote date, and preserved only by the more learned and honest of them — either gave the Hebrew word for word or hit on some parallel to the Hebrew forms, so that Greek readers could follow. In many other passages we can find traces of this kind of contrivance on the translators’ part, as I noticed when I was collating the various editions.

You raise another objection, which I give in your own words: [k]

“And add to this: how is it that people who were captives among the Chaldeans, gambled away at dice, thrown out unburied in the streets — as was prophesied of the earlier captivity, their sons taken from them to be made eunuchs and their daughters to be concubines, as had also been prophesied — how is it that such people could pass a sentence of death, and pass it on the wife of their own king Joakim, whom the king of the Babylonians had made a partner of his throne? And if it was not this Joakim but some other man from the common people, where would a captive get such a mansion and such a large garden?”

Where you get your “gambled away at dice” and “thrown out unburied in the streets” I do not know, unless it is from Tobit — and we ought to notice that the Jews do not use Tobit, or Judith either. They are not even found among the Hebrew apocryphal books, as I learned from the Jews themselves. Still, since the churches do use Tobit, you should know that even in the captivity some of the captives were rich and well off. Tobit himself says,

“Because I remembered God with all my heart, the Most High gave me favor and a pleasing appearance in the eyes of Shalmaneser, and I was his purchasing agent; and I went into Media and left about seven hundred and fifty pounds of silver in trust with Gabael, the brother of Gabrias, at Rages, a city of Media.”

And he adds, as a rich man would,

“In the days of Shalmaneser I gave many gifts to my brothers. I gave my bread to the hungry and my clothes to the naked; and if I saw any of my nation dead and thrown outside the walls of Nineveh, I buried him. And if King Sennacherib killed any when he came fleeing from Judea, I buried them secretly — for in his rage he killed many.”

Ask yourself whether this long catalogue of Tobit’s good deeds does not point to great wealth and a large estate, especially when he adds, “When I understood that I was being looked for, to be put to death, I withdrew in fear, and all my goods were seized.”

And another captive, Ahikar, son of Tobit’s brother Ananiel, was set over the whole treasury of King Esarhaddon’s kingdom, and over its whole administration; and we read, “Now Ahikar was cupbearer and keeper of the signet ring, and steward and comptroller of the accounts.”

Mordecai, too, frequented the king’s court, and had such freedom of speech before him that he was written down among the benefactors of Artaxerxes. And again we read in Ezra that Nehemiah, a cupbearer and eunuch of the king, of Hebrew stock, made a request about the rebuilding of the temple and obtained it, so that it was granted to him, along with many others, to return and build the temple again. Why then should we be surprised that a certain Joakim had a garden and a house and property, whether they were very expensive or only moderate? The writing does not tell us clearly which.

But you say, “How could people who were in captivity pass a sentence of death?” — asserting, on what grounds I do not know, that Susanna was a king’s wife, because of the name Joakim. The answer is that it is nothing unusual, when great nations are subjugated, for the king to allow the captives to use their own laws and their own courts. Take the present. The Romans rule, and the Jews pay them the half-shekel tax; and see how much power the ethnarch has by Caesar’s concession — so much that we, who have had experience of it, know that he differs little from a real king. Trials are held privately according to the law, and some men are condemned to death. There is no full permission for this, but it is not done without the ruler’s knowledge either, as we learned and were convinced of when we spent a long time in that people’s country. And yet only two tribes are recorded as being under the Romans, Judah and Benjamin — and we may add the tribe of Levi — while at that time, besides Judah, there were the ten tribes of Israel. Probably the Assyrians were content to hold them in subjection and conceded them their own legal processes. [r]

I find yet another objection in your letter, in these words: [t]

“And add that among all the many prophets who came before, there is not one who has quoted another word for word. They had no need to go begging for other men’s words, since their own were true. But this man, in rebuking one of these men, quotes the words of the Lord: ‘You shall not kill the innocent and the righteous.’”

I cannot understand how, with all your practice in searching and meditating on the Scriptures, you have not noticed that the prophets are constantly quoting one another almost word for word. Who among all believers does not know the words in Isaiah?

But in Micah we find a parallel passage, almost word for word:

Again, in First Chronicles, the psalm put into the hands of Asaph and his brothers to praise the Lord, which begins “Give thanks to the Lord, call on his name,” is at the start almost identical with Psalm 105, down to “and do my prophets no harm”; and after that it is the same as Psalm 96, from that psalm’s opening, which runs something like “Praise the Lord, all the earth,” down to “for he is coming to judge the earth.” (Quoting them in full would have taken too long, so I have given these short references, which are enough for the matter before us.) And you will find the law about not carrying a load on the Sabbath in Jeremiah as well as in Moses. And the rules about the Passover, and the rules for the priests, are not only in Moses but also at the end of Ezekiel. I would have quoted these, and many more, if I had not found that the shortness of my stay in Nicomedia has already left me too little time for writing to you.

Your last objection is that the style is different. That I cannot see.

This, then, is my defense. I might well, after all these accusations, go on to praise this history of Susanna, dwelling on it word by word and setting out the exquisite quality of its thought. Perhaps some of the learned and able students of divine things will compose such a tribute another time. But this is my answer to your strokes, as you call them. I wish I could teach you something! But I do not claim that for myself now. My lord and dear brother Ambrose, who has written this down at my dictation and has corrected it as he saw fit while going over it, greets you. His faithful wife Marcella and her children greet you as well. So does Anicetus. Please greet our dear father Apollinaris, and all our friends.