Susanna and Bel and the Dragon appear in some Bibles as Daniel 13 and Daniel 14. I do not receive them as inspired chapters of Daniel, though they contain moral teachings we can recognize as true. Whether their lessons are useful is a different question from whether God gave them as His Word.
The Real Question Is Authority
The canon is the collection of writings received as Scripture. A work belongs in that collection because God gave it as His Word, not because a reader finds it helpful. A sermon can explain biblical truth faithfully without becoming inspired Scripture. Its usefulness depends on the Word it explains, and it remains subject to correction by that Word.
I receive the Old Testament according to the Hebrew Masoretic Text. This traditional Hebrew biblical text also preserves the Aramaic portions of books such as Daniel. Susanna and Bel and the Dragon are absent from Daniel in that tradition. They belong to expanded Greek forms of the book, and I do not give those additions authority to establish doctrine or correct the church as Scripture does.
Christians disagree about that boundary. The Catholic Church receives these additions as inspired, and Orthodox Christianity receives them within its longer Old Testament canon. Protestants generally place them among the Apocrypha, writings outside their canon.
The question, then, is whether these works belong to the Word God gave. Agreement with some biblical teachings cannot settle it. I can approve of a condemnation of lust or idolatry without claiming that every writing expressing it was breathed out by God.
What Susanna and Bel and the Dragon Teach
Susanna concerns a righteous married woman threatened by two corrupt elders who demand sex from her. When she refuses, they falsely accuse her of adultery. Daniel intervenes before she is put to death, separates the accusers, and questions them. Their conflicting answers about the tree under which the alleged offense occurred expose their false testimony. Susanna is vindicated, and the accusers receive the punishment they intended for her.
The elders were supposed to protect justice, yet they used their position to threaten Susanna. The work condemns their lust and false witness while honoring her chastity and courage. Those judgments agree with moral teaching we already have in Scripture. Moses’ law forbids adultery, false testimony, and corrupt judgment, and Proverbs teaches the need for wisdom and integrity in deciding a case.
Bel and the Dragon portrays Daniel exposing fraud behind the worship of Bel in Babylon. The king thinks the idol consumes the offerings, but priests and their families secretly eat them. Daniel has ashes scattered across the temple floor, and the footprints expose what happened. The apparent evidence that an idol lives turns out to be evidence of human deception.
In the dragon episode, Daniel destroys a living creature the people revere, showing that being alive does not make it a god. A later episode describes his deliverance from a lions’ den. These episodes rebuke idolatry and present Daniel as courageous before rulers, using the Babylonian setting familiar from his biblical book.
Scripture already condemns false worship and the dishonesty used to sustain it. Isaiah exposes the helplessness of manufactured idols, Elijah confronts false worship on Mount Carmel, and Daniel 6 records God delivering His servant from the lions. I can recognize the resemblance without treating the added episodes as further inspired accounts of Daniel’s life.
Canonical Daniel Has a Different Character
In the Hebrew and Aramaic Book of Daniel, the exile accounts belong within a work of prophecy. The book records Daniel’s faithfulness under foreign rulers and God’s revelation about kingdoms, judgment, deliverance, and resurrection. Reducing it to the exploits of a wise and courageous man would leave out much of what God revealed through him.
Daniel 2 describes Nebuchadnezzar’s dream of successive kingdoms and the kingdom God will establish. Daniel 7 develops the revelation through visions of beasts and the Son of Man. Daniel 9 connects a prophetic timetable with Messiah, and Daniel 12 reaches to resurrection and final deliverance. The study on the 70 weeks of Daniel examines that timetable more fully.
I understand the successive kingdoms as Babylon, Medo-Persia, Greece, and Rome, followed ultimately by the kingdom God establishes through the Messiah. Jesus Himself directs His hearers to Daniel’s prophecy when teaching about future events:
Therefore when you see the “abomination of desolation,” spoken of by Daniel the prophet, standing in the holy place (whoever reads, let him understand).
Jesus names Daniel as a prophet and treats his words as revelation His hearers must understand. The New Testament does not use Susanna or Bel and the Dragon in that way. Neither is quoted as Danielic prophecy or made a foundation for apostolic doctrine.
The additions offer moral episodes associated with Daniel’s reputation, rather than continuing his visions of kingdoms, covenant promises, and the coming Messiah. I do not read them as extending the inspired prophecy of Daniel 2, 7, 9, or 12. Their resemblance to parts of his life is not enough to give them that standing.
A lack of predictive prophecy would not, by itself, prove a work uninspired. Scripture includes wisdom and historical writings as well as revelation about future events. Here I am comparing these additions with the book to which they have been attached. That comparison must be considered together with Daniel’s text and its place in the canon.
The Hebrew and Aramaic Text and the Canon
The clearest textual distinction is that Susanna and Bel and the Dragon are not contained in the Masoretic Text of Daniel. They survive in Greek forms of the book and other translations, rather than as part of its received Hebrew and Aramaic text. Calling them Greek additions describes that textual distinction; it does not require us to claim certainty about the language in which each was first composed.
Paul identifies the people entrusted with God’s Old Testament revelation:
What advantage then has the Jew, or what is the profit of circumcision? Much in every way! Chiefly because to them were committed the oracles of God.
The oracles are God’s utterances, His revealed Word. Paul says they were entrusted to the Jewish people. I therefore give governing authority to the Hebrew and Aramaic Scriptures received through Israel, rather than allowing an expanded Greek collection to redefine their contents. That is the canonical basis on which I distinguish these additions from Daniel.
After His resurrection, Jesus spoke to His followers about the Scriptures He came to fulfill:
Then He said to them, “These are the words which I spoke to you while I was still with you, that all things must be fulfilled which were written in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms concerning Me.”
The Law of Moses, the Prophets, and the Psalms identify the scriptural categories Jesus received. Luke 24:44 does not list every book or resolve every disputed boundary by itself. It does show Jesus appealing to the Scriptures of Israel as testimony concerning Him, just as He expressly appeals to Daniel the prophet in Matthew 24.
I would not argue that the absence of a direct New Testament quotation automatically excludes a book from the canon. Some canonical Old Testament books are not directly quoted there. In this case, that absence accompanies the more substantial distinction already noted: these writings are not part of the Hebrew and Aramaic Daniel I receive as Scripture.
The Septuagint, the ancient Greek Old Testament translation tradition, remains useful for historical study and comparison. It can help us examine translation choices and understand how Greek-speaking communities encountered Jewish writings. I do not let its expanded forms of Daniel overrule the Hebrew and Aramaic text or supply additional inspired chapters. The question of which Bible translation to trust also requires us to distinguish a translation’s value from the authority of the text it translates.
Moral Value and the Boundary of Scripture
The good a writing teaches cannot give it the standing Paul assigns to Scripture. He describes that authority in his instruction to Timothy:
All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness.
Paul describes Scripture as God-breathed. Its authority for doctrine, reproof, correction, and instruction comes from God Himself. Our approval does not confer that authority on another work. We are responsible to recognize and receive what God has given.
Peter explains the source of prophecy:
For prophecy never came by the will of man, but holy men of God spoke as they were moved by the Holy Spirit.
True prophecy did not originate in a writer’s decision to produce religious literature. The Holy Spirit moved men to speak God’s words. Daniel belongs to that prophetic witness. The moral content of Susanna and Bel and the Dragon does not establish that they share its inspiration, and their place in Greek tradition does not require me to enlarge his book.
When Moses gave Israel the covenant instruction, he warned against adding to or subtracting from it:
You shall not add to the word which I command you, nor take from it, that you may keep the commandments of the LORD your God which I command you.
The verse does not supply a list of the books of the canon. Its warning still applies to the presumption of giving human additions God’s authority. Consulting a dictionary, commentary, or ancient account is not the same as adding to Scripture, provided we do not make that source the final judge of doctrine.
The church receives the Scriptures God gave; its approval does not make a writing God-breathed. I receive the preserved Hebrew and Aramaic Daniel as part of the oracles entrusted to Israel. The additions stand outside that text, so I cannot use them to establish a teaching with the authority of God’s Word.
The same concern extends to other apocryphal or deuterocanonical writings when they are used to support practices canonical Scripture does not establish. Deuterocanonical is the term Catholics use for writings they receive within the Old Testament despite their absence from the Hebrew canon. I disagree with treating them as Scripture, but that does not require me to deny they contain anything worth reading.
How Christians Should Treat These Writings
Finding Susanna or Bel and the Dragon in an old Bible or a Catholic or Orthodox edition need not unsettle us. We should first understand how that edition is arranged and what authority its tradition gives the material. A chapter number tells us where an editor has placed a passage; it cannot, on its own, establish that God inspired it.
We may read these works as ancient religious literature and acknowledge what they teach. Susanna condemns sexual corruption and false accusation; Bel and the Dragon exposes fraudulent worship. We can discuss those lessons while testing them by Scripture, without presenting either work as a continuation of inspired Daniel.
A pastor explaining the Apocrypha or the history of Daniel’s text should identify what he is discussing. If I refer to Daniel 13 without explaining the difference in canons, a reader whose Bible ends Daniel at chapter 12 may understandably be confused. The church should be taught why these writings are disputed, and I should make clear why I do not preach them as Scripture or build doctrine from them.
Our confidence rests in the Word God gave:
Forever, O LORD, Your word is settled in heaven.
I do not need to enlarge Scripture to defend its truth. I need to receive what God has given and study it faithfully. That includes learning what a passage says, recognizing its place in the canon, and allowing it to correct my thinking. The study on the Word of the Lord in the Old Testament considers that divine authority more fully.
My Final Thoughts
I do not receive Susanna or Bel and the Dragon as inspired Scripture. Their moral teachings can be considered honestly, but their association with Daniel in Greek tradition does not place them within the Hebrew and Aramaic book I receive as God’s Word. Jesus names Daniel as a prophet, and our doctrine must rest on the Scriptures God gave. We can learn from ancient literature without treating its useful lessons as proof that God inspired it.