Three Greek Supplements to Daniel

The Additions to Daniel are three passages found in the Greek versions of the Book of Daniel but absent from the shorter Hebrew-Aramaic text that stands in the Jewish and Protestant Bibles. They are: the Prayer of Azariah and the Song of the Three Young Men, inserted into the story of the fiery furnace, in which Daniel's three companions pray and then sing a great hymn of praise (the Benedicite) as they walk unharmed among the flames; the story of Susanna, a virtuous woman falsely accused of adultery by two lecherous elders and saved when the young Daniel cross-examines the accusers separately and exposes their lie; and Bel and the Dragon, a pair of satirical tales in which Daniel unmasks the fraud of the priests of the idol Bel and destroys a living dragon worshipped as a god, ridiculing idolatry and vindicating the God of Israel. These additions were composed or transmitted in Greek, probably in the second or first century BCE, and were part of the Daniel that the Greek-speaking Jewish and early Christian world received.