Susanna (Book of Daniel)
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Susanna or Shoshana (Hebrew: שׁוֹשַׁנָּה, Standard Šošanna Tiberian Šôšannāh ; Egyptian loan: "lily") is considered apocryphal by Protestants, but is included in the Book of Daniel (as chapter 13) by the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches. It is listed in Article VI of the Thirty-Nine Articles of the Church of England[1]. Jews recognize it as a morality tale, but not part of the Tanakh.
As the story goes, a fair Hebrew wife is falsely accused by lecherous voyeurs. As she bathes in her garden, having sent her attendants away, two lusty elders secretly observe the lovely Susanna. When she makes her way back to her house, they accost her, threatening to claim that she was meeting a young man in the garden unless she agrees to make love to them.
She refuses to be blackmailed, and is arrested and about to be put to death when a young man named Daniel interrupts the proceedings. After separating the two men, they are questioned about details of what they saw, but disagree about the tree under which Susanna supposedly met her lover. In the Greek text, the names of the trees cited by the elders form puns with the sentence given by Daniel. The first says they were under a mastic (υπο σχινον, hupo schinon), and Daniel says that an angel stands ready to cut (σχισει, schisei) him in two. The second says they were under an evergreen oak tree (υπο πρινον, hupo prinon), and Daniel says that an angel stands ready to saw (πρισαι, prisai) him in two. The great difference in size between a mastic and an oak makes the elders' lie plain to all the observers. The false accusers are put to death, and virtue triumphs.
The Greek puns in the texts have been cited by some as proof that the text never existed in Hebrew or Aramaic, but other researchers have suggested pairs of words for trees and cutting that sound similar enough to suppose that they could have been used in an original. The Anchor Bible uses "yew" and "hew" and "clove" and "cleave" to get this effect in English. Others suggest that the puns were added by the Greek translator and say nothing about the original form of the text.
The Greek text survives in two versions. The Septuagint's text appears only in the Codex Chisianus. The version of Theodotion, is the one that appears in Roman Catholic bibles. It was regarded as a part of the Daniel literature and was placed at the beginning of the Book of Daniel in manuscripts of the Old Testament. Jerome placed it at the end of Daniel, with a notice that it is not found in the Hebrew Bible.
The early Christian consensus accepted the Susanna tale as canonical[citation needed]. Sextus Julius Africanus was the exception. Origen observes (in Epistola ad Africanum) that it was "hidden" (compare "apocrypha") by the Jews in some fashion. There are no early Jewish references to the book.
[edit] Susanna in art
The story was frequently painted from about 1500, not least because of the possibilities it offered for a prominent nude female. Some treatments emphasize the drama, others concentrate on the nude; a 19th century version by Francesco Hayez (National Gallery, London) has no elders visible at all.
Susanna (and not Peter Quince) is the subject of the poem Peter Quince at the Clavier by Wallace Stevens, which has been set to music by the American composer Dominic Argento and by the Canadian Gerald Berg.
In 1749, George Frideric Handel wrote an English-language oratorio Susanna. The American opera Susannah by Carlisle Floyd, which takes place in the American South of the 20th century, is also inspired by this story, with King David replaced by a hypocritical traveling preacher.
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