SUSANNA, THE HISTORY OF sōō zăn’ ə (שׁﯴשַׁנָּה, Σουσάννα, G5052). One of the Gr. additions to the Heb. (and Aram.) text of Daniel which in the LXX originally was placed after Daniel as an appendix, but which in the important surviving MSS is found before Daniel because of the story’s reference to Daniel as a young boy (cf. v. 45). In the Vul. Susanna occurs at the end of Daniel as an integral part of the book (numbered as ch. 13); in the Protestant Bible it is found as a separate book in the Apoc.

1. Content. The narrative tells of Susanna, a pious woman of great beauty who lived with her wealthy husband Joakim in Babylon. Adjacent to his house Joakim had a large garden in which Susanna loved to stroll at midday when the elders (judges) and litigants, who were in the practice of conducting their business in Joakim’s house, had departed. Two of these elders, however, had for some time been secretly inflamed with desire for Susanna, and one sultry day they individually stole back to the garden where, having surprised each other, they were forced to confess their mutual designs on Susanna. After she had sent away her servants in preparation to bathe, the elders confronted her with the alternative of either submitting to their desires or being exposed as having been caught with a young man. Susanna chose to be unjustly accused “rather than to sin in the sight of the Lord.” At the trial on the following day the men gave their false testimony. But as Susanna was being led away to her execution, the young Daniel was moved by the Lord (in answer to Susanna’s prayer) to protest the precipitate action. At their invitation, Daniel sat with the judges in a renewed examination of the evidence. He shrewdly examined the men separately, inquiring under which tree in the garden Susanna and her alleged lover were seen. The contradictory answers to this question exposed the treachery of the two elders who in turn received the punishment which was to have been Susanna’s. The innocence of Susanna had been vindicated and the narrative concludes with a statement that from thence onward Daniel’s reputation among the people was established.

2. Historicity. Although the narrative is given a prima facie historical setting (Babylon, during the youth of Daniel; cf. the names Joakim; Susanna, daughter of Hilkiah) it is doubtful that the story is a historical one. It has been pointed out that a number of the circumstantial details of the story (e.g. Joakim’s luxurious house and gardens, and his servants; synagogues; elected judges; the right of capital punishment) do not fit the situation one expects among members of a newly exiled population. In addition, Susanna is of the same genre of mystery writing as Bel and the Dragon, another addition to Daniel, and the story consists of motifs (the wrongly accused woman; the wise young judge) which are not unknown in ancient folk lit. It has been suggested by a number of scholars that the author infused some such ancient tale (or tales) with traditional Jewish piety and presented it in new form for his own purposes (cf. Tobit). This explanation is, of course, conjectural but may be regarded as prob. correct.

3. Author, language, and date. The author of this beautiful story remains anonymous. It is not even clear whether he wrote the original in Gr. or Heb., although the play on words in connection with the name of the trees and the imminent punishments (13:54f.: σχῖνοι—σχίσει; v. 58f.: πρῖνον—καταπρίσῃ [πρίσαι, Theodotion]) seems to suggest a Gr. original (unless the Gr. tr. has endeavored to imitate the word play of a Sem. original). The date of the document is similarly difficult to determine, but the consensus of modern scholarship is that it dates from the 2nd cent. or the beginning of the 1st cent. b.c. Depending on whether one decides for a Heb. or Gr. original, Susanna is usually assigned a Palestinian or Alexandrian origin.

4. Purpose. The question concerning the purpose of the author in writing the story is an interesting one. Several writers have conjectured that if the author wrote from a Palestinian milieu, he may well have written the story as a Pharisaic polemic against the jurisprudence of the ruling Sadducees. An interesting piece of history could serve as the background to Susanna: the son of Simon ben Shetach, leader of the Pharisees in the time of Alexander Jannaeus, was condemned to death by testimony of a false witness who was duly exposed, but upon whom, by Sadducean interpretation of lex talionis, no punishment could be inflicted since the son of Simon had not yet been executed. (Thereupon, it is said, the son of Simon chose to die that his false accusers might also die.) If this is the background of Susanna the author could have intended the work as a satire on the “justice” of the Sadducean legal system as well as an apologetic for the careful cross-examination of witnesses and the punishment of perjurers. On the other hand, the story may well have originated in Alexandria, having been intended merely as an illustration of the justice of God in answering the prayer of the righteous. As an incentive to purity of life and trust in God the story is of powerful significance.

5. Text and canonicity. The Gr. text of Susanna is available in the standard editions of the LXX. As with the Book of Daniel itself, there are two recensions, the Theodotionic and the “LXX” represented by codex Chisianus (see under Book of Daniel). The story is substantially the same in the two VSS but there are a number of differences in detail.

Origen argued for the canonicity of the book; Jerome included it in the Vul. However, the Roman Catholic Church alone among Christian bodies has recognized the full canonicity and authority of Susanna (at the Council of Trent, 1548). In the early Christian Church Susanna was often understood as an allegory of the Church.

Bibliography D. M. Kay in R. H. Charles, APOT (1913), 638-651; W. O. E. Oesterley, The Books of the Apocrypha (1915), 391-394; E. J. Goodspeed, The Story of the Apocrypha (1939), 65-70; R. H. Pfeiffer, History of New Testament Times with an Introduction to the Apocrypha (1949), 434-436; 448-454; B. M. Metzger, An Introduction to the Apocrypha (1957), 107-113; R. A. F. Mac Kenzie, “The Meaning of the Susanna Story,” Canadian Journal of Theology III (1957), 211-218; F. Zimmermann, “The Story of Susanna and Its Original Language,” JQR XLVIII (1957-1958), 237-241; L. H. Brockington, A Critical Introduction to the Apocrypha (1961), 93-99; O. Eissfeldt, The Old Testament: An Introduction (1965), 588ff.