Canon and Character

Because they stood in the Septuagint version of Daniel but not in the Hebrew text later fixed by the rabbis, the Additions followed the familiar fate of such material. The Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches receive them as an integral, deuterocanonical part of the book of Daniel; Judaism and the Protestant Reformers set them apart among the Apocrypha, and in Protestant Bibles that print the Apocrypha they appear separately rather than woven into Daniel. Each has had a rich afterlife.

The Song of the Three Young Men entered Christian worship as a canticle of praise still sung in the churches. Susanna became one of the most popular subjects in Western art and a favourite example in discussions of legal procedure and the examination of witnesses. Bel and the Dragon furnished vivid material for the ancient polemic against idolatry, and its detective-like unmasking of the priests' trick has led some to call it one of the earliest surviving "detective stories." Scholars value the Additions as examples of the devotional and folk-narrative expansion of biblical books in the Second Temple period.