8

The book of Daniel, as found in the Tanach consists of 12 chapters: 1 and 8-12 in Hebrew and 2-7 in Aramaic. This contains the familiar Daniel story and his four visions.

Catholic and Orthodox (but not most Protestant) Christianity also include three additions to the book found only in Greek in the text of the Septuagint. These contain the The Prayer of Azariah and Song of the Three Holy Children, the Story of Susanna and the Elders, and the story of Bel and the Dragon.

My question is: How are these 'extra' parts understood by Rabbis and Jewish tradition? Are they scripture?, later additions?, of value?, not of value?

I do not know if their presence in the Septuagint indicates that those verses would have been used by Judaism at some point. Does Judaism dismiss such texts or are they accorded a different amount of respect?

| improve this question | |
  • 2
    I re-worked your question pretty extensively to add specifics of what you are asking. I hope I maintained your intent. If you disagree you can edit further or roll-back my changes. – Mike Oct 4 '15 at 5:10
  • 4
    Rabbi Leiman has a great mp3 on yutorah on the Apocrypha. Apparently [Saint Jerome] asked the Jews why the story of Susana wasn't in their canon; the Jews replied that it involves Jewish capital punishment without Jewish self-rule, which didn't happen. – Shalom Oct 4 '15 at 13:37
  • 1
    @Jacob after Mike's edit we've reopened this question. – Monica Cellio Oct 4 '15 at 17:18
  • Thanks @Mike you have been able to add the more specific pieces of information that I was not aware of. (I know LXX/Greek translation had extra passages, I did not know the exact names of them.) – Jacob Oct 5 '15 at 10:27
3

The answer is that when Jews stopped speaking Greek, and therefore stopped relying on the Septuagint, these books/chapters fell away and were retroactively deemed heretical/not a part of Judaism. A similar situation occurred with other books such as Sefer Hanoch (The Book of Enoch) and the book of Jubilees. Studied in antiquity, they fell out of common usage and were deemed heretical, though certain teachings/stories from them continued to crop up in Judaism throughout time (like Rashbam saying that days start with sunrise and not sunset, which is the opinion of Sefer Enoch).

| improve this answer | |

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .