A courtroom story about a false charge · Greek addition to Daniel, c. 2nd-1st century BC
Susanna
Two respected judges lie about an innocent woman, and a young man stops the execution by asking one question twice.
- 1Chapter
- 64Verses
- c. 200-100 BCEWritten
Original language: Greek (Susanna and Bel originally); Hebrew/Aramaic substrate for Prayer of Azariah
King James Version Apocrypha (1769 standardized text) · public domain
Read Susanna
King James Version + Apocrypha (standardized 1769 text), eBible.org USFX edition of the Crosswire/eBible KJV — Public Domain — One of the three Additions to Daniel.
Plain answers first
What this book is
Susanna is a single-chapter story attached to the Greek Daniel, printed in some Bibles as Daniel chapter 13. It is a court tale, the same kind of story as Daniel 1-6: a faithful Jew in a foreign land is cornered and God vindicates them.
Susanna is a wealthy, God-fearing wife in Babylon. Two elders, appointed judges that year, watch her in her husband's garden and burn for her. They corner her alone and give her a choice: give in to them, or they will testify that they caught her with a young man. She refuses, and says it is better to fall into their hands than to sin against God.
They accuse her publicly. The assembly believes them, because they are elders, and condemns her to death. She is being led away when a young Daniel stops the crowd and demands a real trial.
He separates the two witnesses and asks each the same question: under what tree did you see this? One says a mastic tree, the other says a holm oak. The stories do not match, the elders are condemned under the law's rule for false witnesses, and Susanna goes home.
In Greek, each tree name puns on the sentence Daniel pronounces, which is one reason many scholars think the story was composed in Greek, though others argue for a Hebrew or Aramaic original. It is usually dated to the second or first century BC.
The canon question, honestly
Why it stands outside the 66
Like the other Daniel additions, Susanna is absent from the Hebrew and Aramaic Daniel and appears only in the Greek. Jerome flagged it as not being in the Hebrew. As early as the third century Julius Africanus wrote to Origen arguing the story could not be original because of those Greek wordplays, and Origen wrote back defending it, so the question was being debated among Christians long before the Reformation. The Reformers placed it among the apocrypha; Rome and the Orthodox churches keep it with Daniel.
Why a student of the 66 should still open it
Why read it — and how
For a story this old, its instincts about justice are striking. It insists that the office of judge does not make a man honest, that a crowd can be certain and wrong, and that testimony must be tested before it costs a life. Separating witnesses to see whether their accounts agree is basic cross-examination, and this is one of the earliest places anyone wrote it down. The story has echoed far beyond the Bible: it gave the English language the phrase a Daniel come to judgment, and it has been painted for five hundred years, most searchingly by Artemisia Gentileschi, who painted Susanna's fear from the inside.
It is one chapter, so read it whole, in one go. Read it against Deuteronomy 19:15-21, the law about false witnesses, which is exactly the law Daniel applies. Then ask the uncomfortable question the story is really asking: whose word does your community automatically believe, and who pays when that trust is misplaced?
Doors into the text
Key moments
Verses 1-14. Two appointed judges hide in a private garden, each ashamed to tell the other what he wants.
Verses 19-23. Cornered, she says it is better to fall into their hands than to sin in the sight of the Lord.
Verses 28-41. Their standing carries the room, and she is condemned without evidence.
Verses 45-49. A young man refuses to go along with the verdict and calls the trial a sham.
Verses 51-59. The witnesses are separated, asked the same question, and give different answers.
Verses 60-64. The false witnesses receive the penalty they intended for her, and Daniel's reputation begins.
The disagreement is old — here it is plainly
Where the traditions stand
| Tradition | Where this book stands |
|---|---|
| jewish | not canonical; Hebrew original (if any) lost |
| anglican | apocryphal — read for example of life and instruction of manners |
| catholic | canonical (deuterocanonical; Daniel 3, 13, 14 in Vulgate) |
| protestant | non-canonical; retained in Luther's 1534 Apocrypha |
| eastern orthodox | canonical (anagignoskomena) |
| oriental orthodox | canonical |