Annotatio CCXLV

”In the third year of the reign of Joachim,” etc. — Daniel 1:1

Jerome, in the preface of the translation on Daniel, giving [his] opinion concerning the parts of the book of Daniel, thus writes:¹ “These things I therefore relate, that I might show you the difficulty of Daniel — which, among the Hebrews, has neither the history of Susanna, nor the hymn of the three children, nor the fables of Bel and the dragon; which we, because they are dispersed throughout the whole world, having prefixed a spit [obelus], and stabbing them through, subjoined [appended], lest we should seem, among the unskilled, to have cut off a great part of the volume. I heard, therefore, a certain one of the teachers of the Jews, when he derided the history of Susanna, and said that it had been fabricated by some Greek or other, to object that which the African [Julius Africanus] also opposed to Origen: [namely] that these etymologies — ἀπὸ τοῦ σχίνου, σχίσαι [from the mastic-tree, to split], and ἀπὸ τοῦ πρίνου, πρῖσαι [from the holm-oak, to saw]² — descend from the Greek speech; of which matter we can give this understanding to our [readers]: that, for example, we might say concerning the holm-tree [ilex] that [the judge] said to him, ‘Straightway mayest thou perish’ [ilico pereas], and ‘from the mastic [lentisco] into a lentil [lentem] may the Angel crush thee’; or, ‘Mayest thou not perish gently, or slowly [lentus]’ — that is, ‘flexible mayest thou be led to death’; or something else suiting the name of the tree. Then he cavilled that there was only so much leisure to the three children,³ that in the furnace of the raging fire they should sport in meter, and in order provoke all the elements to the praise of God; or [cavilled] what a miracle, and token of divine inspiration, it was, either that the dragon was slain by a lump of pitch,⁴ or that the contrivances of the priests of Bel were detected — [things] which were perpetrated rather by the prudence of a shrewd man than by a prophetic spirit. But when he came to Habakkuk — [reading] that he was snatched from Judaea into Chaldaea to carry the dish [of pottage] — he sought an example, where we might have read, in the whole Old Testament, that any of the saints had flown with [his] heavy body, and in a point of an hour had crossed such spaces of lands.⁵ To whom, when a certain one of ours, prompt enough for speaking, had brought Ezekiel into the midst, and said that he had been translated from Chaldaea into Judaea, he laughed at the man, and, from the very volume, demonstrated that Ezekiel had seen himself transposed in the spirit.⁶ Finally, [he objected] that even our Apostle — namely, as a learned man, and one who had learned the law from the Hebrews — had not dared to affirm that he was snatched away in the body, but had said, ‘Whether in the body, or out of the body, I know not; God knoweth.’⁷ By these and such arguments he argued the [tales] in the book of the Church [to be] apocryphal fables. Concerning which matter, leaving the judgment to the arbitration of the reader, I admonish this: that Daniel is not had among the Hebrews among the Prophets, but among those who wrote the Hagiographa. For all Scripture is divided by them into three parts — into the Law, into the Prophets, and into the Hagiographa — that is, into five, and eight, and eleven books; concerning which it is not of this time to discourse. But what things Porphyry objects out of this Prophet — nay, against this book — Methodius, Eusebius, and Apollinarius are witnesses, who, answering his madness with many thousands of verses, [I know not] whether they have satisfied the curious reader.”

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These things Jerome; whom Rufinus, presbyter of Aquileia, in the book of the Invectives, criminates especially on account of three [things]. First, that, at the exhortation of Baraba the Jew, his teacher, he cast out from the volume of Daniel the history of Susanna — which for almost four hundred years the Church had read for the instruction of chastity — and that by a certain rhetorical craft, under another’s person, he brought in arguments against it. Second, that he removed from its place, and cut off, the hymn of the three children, which the Church especially chanted on solemn days. Third, that he said Daniel was not to be held among the Prophets.

Meeting these charges, Jerome, in the first book of the Invectives against Rufinus, responds to him in this manner: “Concerning Daniel, however, I will briefly respond: that I did not deny him [to be] a Prophet — whom I straightway, at the front of the prologue, confessed to be a Prophet — but [wished] to show what the Hebrews said, and by what arguments they strove to prove their opinion; and I taught the reader that the Churches of Christ read this Prophet according to Theodotion, and not according to the Seventy translators. Of which [editions], if in that book I said the [Septuagint] edition to differ much from the truth, and to be reprobated by the right judgment of the Churches of Christ, it is not my fault, [I] who said [it], but theirs who read [it]. There are at hand four editions — of Aquila, Symmachus, the Seventy, and Theodotion. The Church reads Daniel according to Theodotion. What have I sinned, if I followed the judgment of the Churches? But when I report what the Hebrews are wont to say against the history of Susanna, and the hymn of the three children, and the fables of Bel and the dragon — which are not had in the Hebrew volume — he who criminates me [as] a fool proves himself a slanderer [sycophant]: for I explained not what I myself thought, but what they are wont to say against us; whose opinion if I did not answer in the prologue, studying brevity, [it was] lest I should seem to write not a preface, but a book. I said, therefore, that I straightway subjoined [it]: for I said, ‘concerning which it is not of this time to discourse.’ Otherwise also, from that which I asserted — that Porphyry said many things against this prophet, and I called as witnesses of this matter Methodius, Eusebius, and Apollinarius, who answered his madness with many thousands of verses — he will be able to accuse me [and ask] why I did not, in the little preface, write against the books of Porphyry. He who pursues trifles of this sort, and will not receive the truth from the Hebrew Scripture, let him hear [me] freely proclaiming: No one is compelled to read what he does not wish; I wrote for those seeking [it], not for the fastidious; gratis, not for the envious; for the studious, not for the yawning. And yet I wonder how [he could call] Theodotion a heretic —” ### ANNOTATIO CCXLV (concluded)

“In the third year of the reign of Joachim,” etc. — Daniel 1:1

(Jerome’s reply to Rufinus concludes:) ”…[a heretic] whom he both reads as judaizing, and [yet] disdains the translation of whatsoever Christian sinner.”

Read these things more fully in book 8, in the confutation of the sixth heresy.