The Apocryphal Stories
There are 4 stories in the Septuagint version of Daniel that do not appear in most Bibles used by Protestants. They are included in both Catholic and Orthodox Bibles. And they are FANTASTIC stories. I thought I’d share them as a kind of bonus. You can, of course, read them in full on your own in the YouVersion app if you select the KJV with Apocrypha, or if you pick up (or check out from your local library) a copy of an Orthodox or Catholic Bible.
SUSANNA
In this story, a Jewish man living in Babylon named Joakim 🧔🏽 has a beautiful wife named Susanna. 👩🏻 Two of the elder judges of the land are captivated by her beauty and after stalking 👀 her for a while decide to plot together to proposition her.
They spy and wait and find their opportunity on a hot day when Susanna has some time to herself and takes a bath in the privacy of her enclosed back garden. 🛀🌴
They hide behind the foliage 🌿🪴 and wait for her maids to leave.
“When the maids leave the two elders 👴🏽👨🏽🦳run to her and say, ‘Look, the doors 🚪 of the garden 🪴 are closed and no one will see us, and we desire you. Therefore give us your consent and lie with us. If you do not, we will testify that a young man was with you…” (v. 19-21)
They attempt to blackmail her into sexual favors. She knows she will probably be stoned whether she accepts or refuses but Susanna says, 👩🏻 “It is better for me not to do it and to fall into your hands than to sin against the Lord.” So she screams. The servants come running, and the creepy old codgers make up a story that they caught her in the act of adultery with a young man who ran away when they showed up.
Susanna is put on trial 👨🏻⚖️ and the two judges get everyone to side with them, after all, they are upstanding men in leadership.
Just as they are about to take Susanna away to execute her for adultery, she cries out “to the Lord Who knows all things done in secret.” And the Lord stirs up Daniel who was a very young man at the time and Daniel shouts out, 🧑🏽🦱 “I am innocent of the blood of this woman!”
Everyone turns and looks at him. And he basically goes full Perry Mason on them. He marches the whole group to Susanna’s home (the scene of the crime) and separates the two “witnesses.” He cross-examines them individually and asks each to show him which tree Susanna and her supposed lover were under. One says, “under the mastic tree.” 🌴 The other’s sworn testimony is that they were “under the evergreen oak.” 🌳 So Daniel caught them in their lies, Susanna 👩🏻 was acquitted and restored, and the two nasty old judges were put to death. 🪦🪦
THE IMAGE OF BEL EATS FOOD
Cyrus, king of Persia was a devotee of the Babylonian god Bel 🗿 and went to worship his image every day. The king asked his assistant and confidant Daniel why he did not worship Bel.
“Because I do not worship idols made with hands, but only the living God who created heaven and earth and has dominion over all flesh,” was Daniel’s response.
“Do you not think Bel 🗿 is a living god? Do you not see how much he eats and drinks every day?,” asked the king, for indeed, every day on the altar before Bel was placed 12 bushels of fine flour, 40 sheep, and 6 vessels of wine.
🥖🍞🥖🍞🥩🍖🐑🐑🐑🥩🍖🍷🍷🍷🍷
“Do not be deceived, O King,” said Daniel, “for it is but clay inside and bronze outside and it has never eaten or drunk anything.”
This made Cyrus angry and so he ordered the 70 priests 👳🏻♂️ of Bel to demonstrate that Bel 🗿 was eating all that food. If they could prove that Bel was eating the food, then Daniel would die for blasphemy against Bel. If they couldn’t prove it, then they would die. 💀
So that evening, King Cyrus, and Daniel go with the 70 priests (and their families) to the temple 🛕 of Bel. The priests step outside and tell the king to set out the food 🍖 and wine. 🍷 The king would be the last one out and would shut the doors 🚪 himself and seal them with the royal signet 💍 to assure the food could not possibly be tampered with.
“If you do not find Bel has eaten it all when you come tomorrow,” the priests said, “we will suffer death. Or else Daniel shall die, who speaks lies against us.”
😐 Good grief. They didn’t believe in playing for small stakes back then did they? They go straight to betting their lives on it.
Well, the priests were quite sure that all the food would be gone by the morning because they had a secret trap door under the huge altar to Bel. And every night they and all their families would sneak into the temple and collect the food and eat it.
😯 oohhh… How’s Daniel gonna get out of this one?
“So, when they had all gone, the king set out the food for Bel. And Daniel ordered his servants to bring in ashes, which they sprinkled throughout all the temple in the presence of the king alone. Then they went out, shut the door, and sealed it with the king’s signet and departed.”
The next day Cyrus and Daniel went early to the temple. The seal was still intact and the king opened the doors to see that the food was all gone. He got all excited and started praising Bel but Daniel began laughing and pointed out to the king all the footprints 👣of men, women, and children in the ashes.
👣👣👣👣👣👣👣👣👣👣👣👣👣👣👣
Whereupon, the king summoned the priests and they were forced to reveal the trap door and admit they been the ones eating the food.
Cyrus had them all put to death 🪦 and handed the temple and the idol of Bel over to Daniel who destroyed them both.
DANIEL AND THE DRAGON
There was a large dragon – probably what we would call a “dinosaur” (just a large reptile) in Babylon that the people worshiped. They were pretty wild for dragons and had them depicted on the famous Ishtar Gate:
The Babylonian god Marduk was revered for killing the chaos dragon named Tiamat.
🤨 Dragon? It looks like his pet Doberman.
It’s meant to represent primordial chaos.
🤨 Humph.
Back to the story…
🤨 Oh no ya don’t. You can just say, “The ancient Babylonians had a real live dinosaur dragon in their zoo that people worshiped,” and then go on like nothing just happened!
(Sigh) This is too big a can of worms to open. But if you really feel the need to open it, here ya go. Click on that. I’ll let Answers In Genesis do it.
Short answer:
🤨 Hogwartsia? Ok. Now I KNOW you’re messing with me.
Nope. That’s an actual dragon (dinosaur) skull. And that is its real name. The skull, along with several vertebra were unearthed in 2003 in the Hell Creek formation in South Dakota. It’s a small one though, about the size of a big kangaroo. It was donated to the Children’s Museum of Indianapolis where it is on display.
😳😲🤯
NOW back to the story…
So King Cyrus 🤴🏽 says to Daniel, “You can’t say THIS isn’t a living god! Look! It eats and drinks. You can’t say it’s made of bronze. You should worship it.”
Daniel replied “I will worship the LORD my God for He is the living God. But with your permission, O King, I shall slay this dragon without sword or staff.”
The king granted his permission because he believed the dragon to be immortal.
So Daniel took pitch and tar and hair and boiled them together and made cakes 🧁 of them and put them in the mouth of the dragon. 🐉 And the dragon ate them and burst open killing it.
Then Daniel said, “Behold the things you have been worshiping.”
😯 Daniel killed the dragon… with a hairball?
Several hairballs. Yes.
🤓 Not as fancy and slaying a dragon with a sword or a lance, but very effective. And practical. That guy Daniel was quite a guy,
DANIEL IN THE OTHER LION’S DEN
By now Daniel has proved Bel is a fraud and destroyed the idol and his temple. He has caused the priests of Bel to be put to death, AND he has killed the dragon that they worshiped. And King Cyrus let him do it. So the people (in rather Nazi-esque fashion) accuse the king of being a Jewish sympathizer and demand that Daniel be handed over to them or they will kill the king and his family. 🗡️😡🗡️😤😡😠😖
The king reluctantly turns Daniel over to the mob and they promptly throw him into a pit with seven lions. 🦁🦁🦁🦁🦁🦁🦁
The lions had been used to getting 2 sheep 🐑 🐑 🍖 a day but they hadn’t been fed for a few days so they’d be really good and hungry. Daniel was left in there for 6 days.
Meanwhile, in Judea…
The prophet Habakkuk had made some stew 🍲 and bread 🥖 and was about to take it to the field to feed a hungry crew of harvesters. And the Angel of the LORD shows up and tells him to take it instead to Babylon to Daniel in the lion’s den.
Habakkuk says, “O Lord, I have never seen Babylon, nor do I know where to find this den!”
So the Lord picks him up by the hair (like Ezekiel) and flies Habakkuk to Daniel in Babylon. Habakkuk tells Daniel that God has sent the food.
🤔 For the lions?
No. For Daniel. Six days is a long time without food or water, lions or not.
“You have remembered me O God,” Daniel prayed, “and You have not forsaken those who love You.” So Daniel ate the food and God teleported Habakkuk back to his home.
Then on the 7th day the king 🤴🏽 went to the den to mourn for Daniel and there he was, very much alive. And the king praised the God of Daniel, pulled him out of the lions den and took the men who had demanded his life and threw them to the lions instead.
🦁
Now, this last story may be a variation or additional information on the usual Daniel story. The Habakkuk element is interesting because if this is the same prophet Habakkuk that wrote the book that bears his name, well, he lived about 100 years before Daniel. It could be a different Habakkuk. But if not, this either has a time-travel element or God brought him back from the dead somehow. Neither of these is as wild as it sounds at first. Ezekiel and John both travelled in the heavenly realm and saw things in the future. So did other prophets. Ezekiel was flown to Jerusalem and back from Babylon. And Jesus talked with Moses on the mount of transfiguration after Moses had been dead for like 1500 years.
These stories were and still are in the Septuagint, which was the Bible that the Apostles knew. The early readers of the NT would’ve know these stories and thought of them as true. They are still accepted as inspired scripture by millions of Christians.
I wonder if any of the men about to stone the woman taken in adultery thought of the story of Susanna. Jesus was in the role of Daniel standing up to her accusers. Only, this woman had apparently gone along with whatever scheme they cooked up to “catch” her in the very act. Jesus cross-examined them in a different way.
I find the story of the priests with the trap door and the footprints in the ashes brilliantly clever.
They also suggest a completely turned around people. When the exile began, many of the people were still addicted to their idol worship and that’s what the prophets wrote about. By the time of Daniel, we have a a woman choosing death rather disobeying the LORD and prophet mocking the very idea of idol worship. And Daniel is their hero.
😏 Well, he IS technically a dragon-slayer.
🤓 Three cheers for Sir Daniel the Clever, Wielder of Dragonsbain, the Hairball of Death! 🛡️🏰
✊🏼😆Huzzah!
And whether you believe these stories to be true or not, they all carry in them the repeated message of – “We will not compromise, not even in the face of death. We will worship only the LORD our God and trust in Him.”
THAT is an incredible turn-around for a once idol-prone nation who cast their God aside at every opportunity.
And whether you believe the story about the dragon to be true or not, consider that it was kept in the cannon and counted as scripture by the Septuagint translators. I know of no record where the Apostles or early church fathers renounced it as fiction. If it had been a giant purple fur-toad instead of a dragon, they would’ve said, “Ok, not sure how this got in here but there is no such thing as a giant purple fur-toad so this story is probably not inspired. We should leave it out.” No one never did that. For about 1500 years. Think about what that implies. It implies that…until about a thousand years ago, people knew that dragons were REAL. 🐉
To The Reader 