Chapter 25

The Additions to Daniel and Esther — Expanding the Canon or Restoring What Was Lost?

What if some of the most important parts of two beloved Old Testament books were cut out — and most Christians never even noticed?

That is the question we face when we look at the deuterocanonical additions to Daniel and Esther. If you have only ever read a Protestant Bible, you have read a shorter version of both books. The book of Daniel that you know contains twelve chapters. But in the Septuagint — the Bible of the apostles and the early church — Daniel has fourteen. Tucked inside chapter three is a magnificent prayer and a soaring hymn of praise. At the end of the book are two additional stories that show Daniel unmasking the foolishness of idol worship. And the book of Esther? The version you know has 194 verses. The Greek version has 107 more — adding prayers, dreams, royal edicts, and, most strikingly, over fifty explicit references to God in a book that, in Hebrew, never mentions God at all.

These are not minor additions. They are substantial pieces of sacred literature that the early church received as authentic parts of Daniel and Esther for well over a thousand years. When we encounter them, we are forced to ask a provocative question: Are these later expansions that were added to the canonical books? Or are they original material — ancient traditions that were part of the books from the beginning but were removed when the rabbinic establishment narrowed the Hebrew canon in the second century?

In this chapter, we will walk through each of these additions carefully. We will examine their content, their theological significance, and the scholarly debate about their origins. As we do, I think you will see that these texts deserve far more respect than Protestants have typically given them — and that their removal from our Bibles has cost us something precious.

Part One: The Additions to Daniel

The canonical book of Daniel in the Hebrew Bible (and in Protestant Bibles) contains twelve chapters. It tells the story of a faithful Jewish exile in the courts of Babylon and Persia who refuses to compromise his faith, interprets dreams and visions, and receives stunning apocalyptic revelations about the future. It is one of the most dramatic and beloved books in the Old Testament.

The Greek version of Daniel — preserved in the Septuagint — contains all of this and more. Three additional sections appear in the Greek that are absent from the Hebrew Masoretic Text. These are traditionally called "the additions to Daniel," and they include: (1) the Prayer of Azariah and the Song of the Three Young Men, inserted between Daniel 3:23 and 3:24; (2) the story of Susanna, placed before Daniel 1:1 in the Septuagint (or as chapter 13 in the Latin Vulgate); and (3) Bel and the Dragon, placed after Daniel 12:13 (or as chapter 14 in the Vulgate).¹

An important textual note is in order before we proceed. There are actually two different Greek versions of Daniel that have survived: the Old Greek (OG) translation and the version attributed to Theodotion. These two versions differ from one another, sometimes significantly. What is remarkable is that all three additions appear in both Greek versions, even though the two are otherwise quite different in many places.² This is significant because it means these additions were not the invention of a single translator. They were part of the Daniel tradition in the Greek-speaking world from a very early period. The fact that both the Old Greek and the Theodotionic versions include them suggests that they were considered an integral part of the book of Daniel — not optional appendices that any translator could take or leave.

An additional complication — and one that matters for understanding how these texts came down to us — is that the early church eventually replaced the Old Greek version of Daniel with Theodotion's version in most of its manuscripts. As S. Douglas Woodward observes, Theodotion's version of Daniel became the church's preferred Greek translation, finding its way into the church's Greek Bible.³ This means that when we read the Greek Daniel today in most Septuagint editions, we are actually reading Theodotion's version rather than the original Old Greek — a fact that scholars have long recognized. The Old Greek of Daniel survives in only a handful of manuscripts, most notably Papyrus 967 (a pre-Hexaplaric manuscript from the second or third century AD) and the Codex Chisianus (an eleventh-century manuscript).⁴

With that background in place, let us look at each of the three additions in turn.

1. The Prayer of Azariah and the Song of the Three Young Men

This is the longest of the three additions, and in many ways, the most beautiful. If you know the story of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego — the three young men thrown into the fiery furnace by King Nebuchadnezzar for refusing to worship a golden idol (Daniel 3) — then you already know the setting. In the Hebrew text, the narrative moves directly from the three men being thrown into the fire (Daniel 3:23) to Nebuchadnezzar's astonished reaction when he sees four figures walking unharmed in the flames (Daniel 3:24). It is a dramatic moment, but it is also surprisingly abrupt. What were the three young men doing inside the furnace? What were they thinking and feeling? The Hebrew text does not say.

The Greek text fills this gap with sixty-eight additional verses. These verses are numbered as Daniel 3:24–90 in Greek editions (and in the New English Translation of the Septuagint, or NETS), and they consist of two distinct compositions joined together: a penitential prayer attributed to Azariah (the Hebrew name of Abednego), and a hymn of praise sung by all three men after their miraculous deliverance.⁵

Azariah's prayer is a confession of national sin and a plea for God's mercy. It has what scholars call a "Deuteronomistic flavor" — meaning it follows the pattern we see throughout the Old Testament where Israel confesses that God's judgment is just, acknowledges that the nation has sinned, and appeals to God's covenant faithfulness for deliverance.⁶ If you have read the great prayers of confession in Nehemiah 9, Daniel 9, or Baruch 1–3 (discussed in Chapter 23), you will recognize the pattern immediately. Azariah prays from inside the furnace, acknowledging that God's judgments on Israel are righteous, confessing the sins of the nation, and pleading with God to act for the sake of His own name and His covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

After the prayer, a brief narrative interlude describes how the angel of the Lord came down into the furnace, drove the flames outward, and made the inside of the furnace feel as though a moist, cool breeze were blowing through it. Timothy Michael Law describes the scene: the angel "shook the flame of the fire out of the furnace as if a moist breeze were whistling through. And the fire did not touch them at all and caused them no pain or distress."⁷ This narrative detail is more than literary decoration. It provides the theological context for what follows: the three men are not merely surviving the furnace. They are being actively delivered by God's angelic messenger. And in response to that deliverance, they burst into song.

The Song of the Three Young Men — sometimes called the Benedicite after its opening word in the Latin Vulgate — is one of the most magnificent hymns in all of biblical literature. It is a creation hymn, a cosmic call to praise, in which the three men summon every part of the created order to bless the Lord. The sun and moon, stars and rain, winds and fire, mountains and hills, seas and rivers, whales and birds, beasts and cattle — all are called upon to "bless the Lord, praise and exalt him above all forever." The hymn is reminiscent of Psalm 148, where the psalmist calls on all creation to praise the Lord. It also echoes the great creation theology of Genesis 1 and Job 38–41, where God's sovereignty over every aspect of the natural world is celebrated.⁸

The theological significance of this addition is considerable. First, it provides a model of faithful prayer in the midst of suffering and persecution — a theme that runs throughout the book of Daniel and that would have been especially meaningful to Jewish readers during the Maccabean period, when faithfulness to God meant risking death. Second, the Song of the Three Young Men is a profound statement of creation theology, affirming that every element of the natural world exists to glorify God. Third, and perhaps most practically, this hymn became one of the most beloved liturgical texts in the early church. It was "regularly sung on festivals in the Church of God," as Rufinus testified in the late fourth century — a witness to the deep place this text held in early Christian worship.⁹

What about the question of origins? Was this addition composed in Hebrew or Greek? Scholars are divided. Law notes that the Prayer of Azariah "alludes to Septuagint texts rather than to the Hebrew Bible" and therefore "may have been an original Greek composition."¹⁰ Other scholars have argued that Semitic idioms and phrases in the text suggest it was translated from a Hebrew or Aramaic original.¹¹ The question is important but not decisive for canonicity. Even if parts of the text were originally composed in Greek, this does not disqualify them from being inspired Scripture. Several New Testament books were composed in Greek, and no one doubts their inspiration on that basis. The real question is not what language the text was first written in, but whether it was received by the believing community as part of the authoritative Scriptures — and on that point, the evidence is overwhelming.

2. Susanna (Daniel 13)

The story of Susanna is one of the most gripping narratives in all of biblical literature. It is a story about justice, courage, the abuse of power, and the vindication of the innocent — themes that resonate as powerfully today as they did two thousand years ago.

Here is the story in brief. Susanna is a beautiful and devout Jewish woman, the wife of a wealthy and respected man named Joakim. Two elders of the community — men who have been appointed as judges — become consumed with lust for her. They spy on her as she bathes in her private garden. Then they approach her and give her a terrible ultimatum: submit to their sexual demands, or they will testify publicly that they caught her committing adultery with a young man — a charge that, under Jewish law, carried the death penalty.

Susanna refuses. She chooses death over sin, declaring, "I am straitened on every side: for if I do this thing, it is death to me; and if I do it not, I shall not escape your hands. It is better for me to fall into your hands and not do it, than to sin in the sight of the Lord."¹² She cries out to God, and the two elders carry out their threat — bringing a false accusation of adultery against her. The community believes the elders, and Susanna is condemned to death.

But God intervenes. He stirs up the spirit of a young man named Daniel, who stands up and challenges the verdict. Daniel demands that the two elders be separated and questioned individually. He asks each one a simple question: under which tree did you see Susanna committing this supposed sin? The first elder says it was a mastic tree (schinos in Greek). The second says it was an evergreen oak (prinos). Their stories do not match. The lie is exposed. Susanna is vindicated, and the two elders are put to death under the very law they tried to use against her — the law that prescribes death for bearing false witness in a capital case (Deuteronomy 19:18–19).¹³

Law notes that Susanna "has increasingly gained feminist appeal, as it demonstrates the ultimate acquittal of an innocent woman who would not cower to the threats of the licentious men but instead stood her ground on her own principles."¹⁴ That is true, and it is worth emphasizing. In a world where women's voices were often silenced and women's bodies were treated as property, the story of Susanna is a striking affirmation that God hears the cry of the vulnerable and acts to vindicate them. The two elders — men of religious authority and social standing — are exposed as predators and liars. The young, powerless woman is declared righteous. This is exactly the kind of story that the biblical prophets would have told, and it fits perfectly within the theological world of Daniel, where the faithful are vindicated and the arrogant are brought low.

The most famous scholarly objection to Susanna came from Julius Africanus in the early third century. Africanus wrote to Origen challenging the authenticity of Susanna on linguistic grounds. His chief argument was that the story contained a Greek wordplay — a pun on the names of the trees (schinos/schisei and prinos/prisei) — that would not work in Hebrew or Aramaic. If the wordplay only works in Greek, Africanus reasoned, the story must have been composed in Greek and therefore cannot be an authentic part of the Hebrew book of Daniel.¹⁵

Origen's response to Africanus is one of the most important documents in the history of the canon debate, and it deserves careful attention — though its full treatment belongs to Chapter 26, where we examine the early church's reception of the deuterocanon in detail. Here we will simply note the key points of Origen's argument. First, Origen addressed the linguistic objection directly, pointing out that wordplay is a feature of translation as well as composition — a skilled translator might introduce a pun in the target language even if the original did not contain one. Second, and more importantly, Origen shifted the ground of the debate from linguistics to ecclesial practice. He reminded Africanus that Susanna "is found in every Church of Christ" and is read as Scripture universally.¹⁶ For Origen, the church's universal reception of a text as Scripture was a more reliable indicator of its authenticity than one scholar's private linguistic analysis.

Origen went further still. He argued that if Christians were to reject every portion of Scripture that the Jews did not accept, they would have to throw out far more than just Susanna. He pointed to other passages in Daniel, Esther, Job, Jeremiah, and Genesis where the Greek text contained material absent from the Hebrew.¹⁷ And then he asked a devastating question: "Are we to suppose that Providence, which in the sacred Scriptures has ministered to the edification of all the churches of Christ, had no thought for those bought with a price, for whom Christ died?"¹⁸ In other words, Origen's argument was fundamentally theological. God, in His providence, had given these Scriptures to the church. To reject them on the basis of Jewish objections was, in Origen's view, to deny God's providential care for His people.

Origen also called on a passage from Proverbs to seal his case: "You shall not remove the ancient landmarks which your fathers have set" (Proverbs 22:28). The Scriptures received by the church from the apostles were those ancient landmarks. No individual Christian — not Africanus, not Jerome, not Luther — had the authority to move them.¹⁹

The scholarly debate about Susanna's original language continues to this day. Law notes that "it was probably translated from a Semitic original" and that "the Old Greek is about a third shorter than the version of Theodotion."²⁰ The existence of two quite different Greek versions supports the idea that the story circulated in the pre-Christian period and was translated (or adapted) by different hands. If it were a late Greek composition with no Semitic background, we would expect only one version, not two.

Susanna is placed before Daniel 1:1 in the Septuagint manuscripts — that is, it serves as a kind of prologue to the entire book. This placement introduces Daniel as a young man gifted with divinely inspired wisdom, setting the stage for his later exploits in the Babylonian court. In the Vulgate, by contrast, Susanna appears as chapter 13, at the end of the book. The different placements in different traditions suggest that the story was considered an integral part of the Daniel collection, not a detachable appendix — though there was disagreement about exactly where it fit best.²¹

3. Bel and the Dragon (Daniel 14)

The final addition to Daniel is a pair of stories about the foolishness of idolatry and the sovereignty of the true God. Like the canonical stories in Daniel 1–6, these narratives portray Daniel as a wise and courageous man who exposes the falsity of pagan religion and risks his life for his faith in the one true God.

The first story concerns Bel — the Babylonian pronunciation of Baal, one of the chief gods of the Babylonian pantheon. The Babylonians worshiped an idol of Bel and provided it with enormous quantities of food and wine every day. Each morning the food and wine were gone, and the priests claimed this proved that Bel was a living god who consumed the offerings. King Cyrus believed them and challenged Daniel: "Do you not think that Bel is a living god? Do you not see how much he eats and drinks every day?"

Daniel laughed. He told the king that the idol was made of clay and bronze — it had never eaten or drunk anything. To prove his point, Daniel devised a clever test. He had ashes scattered on the floor of the temple after the food was set out, and the doors were sealed with the king's own signet ring. When they returned the next morning, the food was gone — but the ashes on the floor revealed footprints. The priests and their families had been entering through secret doors under the table and eating the offerings themselves. The deception was exposed, the king was furious, and Daniel was allowed to destroy the idol and its temple.²²

The second story involves a dragon — or, more accurately, a great serpent (drakon in Greek) — that the Babylonians worshiped as a living god. The king commanded Daniel to worship the dragon, saying, "You cannot say that this is not a living god; so worship him!" Daniel refused. Instead, he asked the king's permission to destroy the dragon without using a sword or club. He then prepared cakes made of pitch, fat, and hair, and fed them to the dragon, which promptly burst apart. Daniel declared, "See what you have been worshiping!"²³

The people were enraged at the destruction of both their idol and their dragon. They threatened the king, who reluctantly handed Daniel over to them. They threw Daniel into a lions' den — a detail that obviously echoes the canonical story in Daniel 6 — where he remained for six days. But God again intervened dramatically. An angel of the Lord seized the prophet Habakkuk by the hair in Judea, transported him miraculously to Babylon, and commanded him to bring Daniel a meal of stew and bread. After Daniel ate, Habakkuk was returned to Judea. On the seventh day, the king came to the den to mourn Daniel — and found him sitting alive and unharmed. The king praised the God of Daniel and punished those who had sought Daniel's destruction.²⁴

The theological significance of Bel and the Dragon is straightforward but powerful. These stories are anti-idolatry polemics — narratives designed to show the utter foolishness of worshiping anything other than the one true God. They follow a pattern deeply rooted in the Old Testament prophets, where the contrast between the living God and dead idols is a major theme. As Law notes, the story of Bel and the Dragon "is similar to the Letter of Jeremiah and of course to the biblical book of Daniel in its opposition to idols."²⁵ The stories are set in the time of Cyrus's rule in the sixth century BC and follow the two dominant themes of the canonical Daniel stories: resistance to pagan pressure and divine deliverance of the faithful.

Like Susanna, Bel and the Dragon exists in two Greek versions — the Old Greek and the Theodotionic — which differ from one another but are roughly the same length. This again suggests a pre-Christian tradition that was transmitted independently by different translators or editors.²⁶ Most scholars believe the stories were translated from a Semitic original, though no Hebrew or Aramaic manuscript has survived.²⁷

The Early Church and the Additions to Daniel

The early church received the additions to Daniel as authentic and inspired parts of the book. The evidence for this is extensive, and we will treat it more fully in Chapter 26. Here we simply note the highlights.

Irenaeus of Lyon (c. 130–202), one of the most important theologians of the second century, unambiguously attributed Bel and the Dragon to "Daniel the Prophet" and treated it as Scripture. He did the same for Susanna. As Gary Michuta observes, Irenaeus cited these deuterocanonical sections of Daniel as authentically belonging to the prophet Daniel himself — not as later additions of uncertain provenance.²⁸

Tertullian (c. 155–220), the great North African theologian, likewise treated the deuterocanonical portions of Daniel as authentic parts of the prophetic book. In multiple works — Scorpion's Antidote, Against Hermogenes, Against Idolatry, and Against the Gnostics — Tertullian cited and used these texts without any indication that he considered them less authoritative than the rest of Daniel.²⁹

Cyprian of Carthage (c. 200–258) considered Bel and the Dragon and Susanna to be authentic parts of Daniel. He stated that these deuterocanonical sections "came from the prophet filled with the Holy Spirit" and that they recorded "the actions of God." This language is the language of inspiration — the language used for Scripture, not for mere edifying literature.³⁰

Origen's defense of Susanna against Julius Africanus, which we discussed above, was perhaps the most extensive early church statement on the additions to Daniel. In his Homilies on Leviticus, Origen went even further, referring to Susanna as part of "the catalogue of divine Scripture" and accusing the Jewish leaders of having "cut off from the catalogue of divine Scripture the history of Susanna."³¹ Notice the implications: Origen believed that the Jews had removed Susanna from the Scriptures — not that Christians had added it. This fits the broader thesis of this book: the rabbinic establishment narrowed the canon and altered the text, and the church's broader canon preserves what was originally there.

Rufinus of Aquileia (c. 345–411) defended the additions to Daniel against Jerome's attempt to remove them from his Latin translation. Rufinus's protest is worth quoting at length because it captures the intensity of feeling that these texts evoked in the early church:

In all this abundance of learned men, has there been one who has dared to make havoc of the divine record handed down to the Churches by the Apostles and the deposit of the Holy Spirit? For what can we call it but havoc, when some parts of it are transformed, and this is called the correction of an error? For instance, the whole of the history of Susanna, which gave a lesson of chastity to the churches of God, has by him been cut out, thrown aside and dismissed. The hymn of the three children, which is regularly sung on festivals in the Church of God, he has wholly erased from the place where it stood. But why should I enumerate these cases one by one, when their number cannot be estimated?³²

Notice Rufinus's language: the additions to Daniel are "the divine record," "the deposit of the Holy Spirit," content "handed down to the Churches by the Apostles." Rufinus was not defending interesting but optional reading material. He was defending what he considered to be the inspired Word of God. And he regarded Jerome's removal of these texts as "havoc" — a desecration of the sacred Scriptures.

Were the Additions Original? The Question of Origins

This brings us to the heart of the question that gives this chapter its title: are these additions to Daniel later expansions, or do they represent material that was removed from the Hebrew text?

The honest answer is that we do not know for certain. The evidence allows for multiple possibilities, and I want to be transparent about the strengths and weaknesses of each position.

The "later addition" view holds that the Prayer of Azariah, the Song of the Three Young Men, Susanna, and Bel and the Dragon were composed as independent texts during the Second Temple period (probably in the second or first century BC) and were later attached to the book of Daniel because of their thematic connections. On this view, the Hebrew text of Daniel preserves the original, shorter book, and the Greek text represents an expanded edition. This is the view held by most Protestant scholars and by many critical scholars.³³

There are some reasons to take this view seriously. The Prayer of Azariah has a generic quality — it does not mention any details specific to the situation of the three young men in the furnace. It could have been composed as an independent penitential prayer and later inserted into the Daniel narrative. Susanna is also somewhat disconnected from the rest of Daniel — as Law observes, "Susanna is odd in that it has no relation to Daniel like the other additions."³⁴ And the magical elements of Bel and the Dragon (the dragon bursting apart, Habakkuk being transported by the hair) have a folkloric quality that some scholars find stylistically different from the rest of Daniel.

The "original material" view holds that these texts — or at least the traditions behind them — were part of the Daniel collection from an early period and were excluded from the Hebrew canon when the rabbinic establishment narrowed the collection in the second century AD. On this view, the Greek text preserves the fuller, more original Daniel, and the Hebrew text represents a trimmed-down edition. This is the view implied by Origen, Rufinus, and most of the early church fathers, and it is the view that fits most naturally with the broader argument of this book.

There are good reasons to take this view seriously as well. First, as we have noted, the additions appear in both Greek versions of Daniel (the Old Greek and Theodotion), suggesting they were part of the Daniel tradition before either translation was made. Second, the additions were included in the Greek book of Daniel by 100 BC at the latest — well before the rabbinic council at Jamnia and the narrowing of the Hebrew canon.³⁵ Third, the theological themes of the additions — faithful prayer in suffering, the vindication of the innocent, the folly of idolatry — are perfectly consistent with the themes of the canonical Daniel. They do not introduce any foreign or heterodox theology. Fourth, the early church's universal reception of these texts as inspired Scripture is best explained if they were part of the apostolic deposit — received from the beginning, not added later.

I will be honest: I find the second view more persuasive, but I hold it with appropriate humility. We cannot prove conclusively that these texts were part of the "original" book of Daniel (if there even was a single "original" — the book of Daniel may have developed through stages of composition, as many scholars believe). What we can say is that these texts were received as Scripture by the believing community, that they were part of the Bible that the apostles and the early church used, and that their removal from the Protestant Bible was a loss. Whether they are "original" to Daniel in a narrowly compositional sense or "original" in the broader sense of being part of the authoritative Danielic tradition from a very early period — either way, they belong in our Bibles.

Part Two: The Additions to Esther

If the additions to Daniel raise important questions about the shape of the canon, the additions to Esther raise what may be an even more striking question — one that touches on the very theology of the book itself.

Here is the puzzle. The book of Esther, as it exists in the Hebrew Masoretic Text and in Protestant Bibles, is unique in the entire Old Testament. It is the only book in the Hebrew Bible that never mentions God. Not once. There is no prayer, no reference to the Lord, no appeal to divine providence, no mention of the covenant, no thanksgiving, no worship. The story is told entirely in terms of human action and political maneuvering. Esther uses her beauty and cleverness to win the king's favor. Mordecai uses his political connections to uncover a conspiracy. The villainous Haman is undone by his own arrogance. The Jews are saved — but, in the Hebrew text, God is never named as the one who saves them.

This has troubled readers for centuries. The ancient rabbis themselves debated whether Esther should be included in the canon. The Babylonian Talmud records disputes about the book's sanctity (Megillah 7a). The Dead Sea Scrolls community at Qumran apparently did not include Esther in their library — it is the only book of the Hebrew Bible for which no fragment has been found among the Dead Sea Scrolls.³⁶ Martin Luther famously expressed his discomfort with the book, saying he wished it did not exist. And countless Christian readers have shared that unease. A book of the Bible that never mentions God? How is that possible?

The Greek version of Esther offers a stunningly different picture. It contains six substantial additions — marked in scholarly editions by the capital letters A through F — that add 107 verses to the 194 in the Hebrew. These additions are not clustered at the beginning or end of the book but are woven throughout the narrative, placed precisely where the Greek editors or translators felt the Hebrew version was "deficient" — that is, where the theological content was conspicuously absent.³⁷

Let us look at each addition in turn.

Addition A: Mordecai's Dream (Placed before Esther 1)

The Greek Esther opens with a dream given to Mordecai, in which he sees two great dragons preparing for battle, the nations gathering against the righteous, and a tiny spring that becomes a great river. The dream is clearly allegorical — the dragons represent Mordecai and Haman, the righteous people are the Jews, and the spring that becomes a river is Esther herself. But the dream serves a crucial theological function: it establishes from the very beginning that the events of the Esther story are not the product of chance or political maneuvering alone. They are the outworking of a divine plan, revealed prophetically in advance.³⁸

This addition also records Mordecai's discovery of the conspiracy against the king (an event mentioned in the Hebrew text at 2:21–23 but given more elaborate treatment here) and contains the first explicit reference to God: Mordecai prays and asks God for the meaning of his dream.

Addition B: The Text of Artaxerxes's First Edict (Inserted between 3:13 and 3:14)

The Hebrew text of Esther tells us that Haman persuaded the king to issue a decree for the destruction of the Jews, but it does not reproduce the text of the decree. Addition B supplies that text. It is written in the style of a formal Persian royal edict — a literary form that was well known in the Hellenistic world — and it lays out Haman's case for destroying the Jews: they are a foreign people with alien customs, they are disloyal to the crown, and their extermination will bring stability and peace to the empire.

The edict is chilling in its bureaucratic efficiency. It reads like a genocidal order dressed up in the language of administrative necessity — and it has been compared, not without reason, to the rhetoric of later persecutors of the Jewish people. The scholars who produced this addition clearly intended it to make the stakes of the story vivid and concrete.³⁹

Law notes that the style of this edict and the one in Addition E "prove these were undoubtedly written in Greek and could have been composed outside of Palestine."⁴⁰ This is one of the clearest cases where a portion of the additions was originally composed in Greek rather than translated from a Semitic original.

Addition C: The Prayers of Mordecai and Esther (Placed before chapter 5)

This is the most theologically significant of all the additions to Esther, and it is the one that most directly addresses the glaring absence of God in the Hebrew text. Addition C contains two extended prayers — one by Mordecai and one by Esther — offered to God in the crisis following Haman's genocidal edict.

Mordecai's prayer is a confession of faith in God's sovereignty. He acknowledges that God is Lord of all and that no one can resist His will. He explains that his refusal to bow to Haman was not motivated by pride but by his unwillingness to give to any human being the honor that belongs to God alone. And he pleads with God to save His people: "Do not overlook your portion, which you ransomed for yourself out of the land of Egypt."

Esther's prayer is even more remarkable — and more personal. She confesses to God that she hates her position in the Persian court, that she abhorred the king's bed, and that she detests the crown on her head. As Law paraphrases, Esther prays that she "hates the glory of the lawless and abhors the bed of the uncircumcised" and that she treats her royal crown as something abhorrent — "like a menstrual cloth."⁴¹ She swears that she has not eaten at Haman's table, has not drunk the wine of pagan libations, and has not rejoiced since the day of her "change" — the day she was taken into the harem. She begs God for courage to carry out her dangerous plan to approach the king uninvited.

Addition C transforms the entire theological character of the book. The Hebrew Esther is a story of human courage and political skill. The Greek Esther is a story of divine providence, faithful prayer, and God's deliverance of His people in response to their cries. Both versions tell the same basic story — but the Greek version tells it as a theological story, not merely a political one.

Addition D: Esther Before the King (Replacing 5:1–2)

In the Hebrew text, Esther's approach to the king is described in two brief verses. She puts on her royal robes, stands in the inner court, catches the king's eye, and receives the golden scepter. In the Greek version, this scene is dramatically expanded. Esther is described as terrified, leaning on her maid for support, her face drained of color. When she enters the king's presence, the king is initially angry — his face blazes with fury. Esther faints. But then God changes the king's heart. His anger turns to gentleness, and he takes her in his arms and comforts her.

Once again, the theological point is clear: it is God who turns the king's heart. The deliverance of the Jews is not the result of Esther's beauty or charm alone — it is the result of divine intervention in response to prayer. This is a direct answer to the theological void of the Hebrew text, where the favorable outcome appears to be the product of coincidence and human effort.⁴²

Addition E: The Text of Artaxerxes's Second Edict (Inserted between 8:12 and 8:13)

Like Addition B, this supplies the text of a royal edict — this time the counter-edict issued by the king at Esther's request, which authorized the Jews to defend themselves against their enemies. The edict identifies Haman as a Macedonian (not a Persian) who tried to undermine the kingdom, praises the loyalty of the Jews, and orders the empire to support them. It explicitly acknowledges that "the living God" directs the course of the kingdom — another direct reference to God that is absent from the Hebrew version.⁴³

Addition F: Mordecai's Dream Interpreted (Placed at the end of the book)

The final addition returns to Mordecai's dream from Addition A and provides its interpretation. The two dragons were Mordecai and Haman. The tiny spring that became a great river was Esther. The nations that gathered against the righteous were the enemies of the Jews. And Mordecai declares, "The Lord has saved his people; the Lord has rescued us from all these evils; God has done great signs and wonders, wonders that have never happened among the nations."

This addition also contains a colophon — a scribal note — stating that the Greek translation of Esther was brought to Egypt "in the fourth year of the reign of Ptolemy and Cleopatra" by "Dositheus, who said he was a priest and a Levite, and his son Ptolemy." Scholars have debated which Ptolemy is meant, but the most likely candidate is either Ptolemy VIII (114 BC) or Ptolemy XII (78/77 BC). Either way, this colophon provides evidence that the Greek Esther (including at least some of the additions) was in circulation by the late second or early first century BC — well before the time of Christ.⁴⁴

The Question of Origins: Were the Additions Original?

The six additions to Esther present a more complex picture than the additions to Daniel, because they are clearly not all of a piece. Scholars have identified that at least four of the additions (A, C, D, and F) were based on Semitic originals — their Greek style shows clear signs of having been translated from Hebrew or Aramaic. But the two royal edicts (B and E) were composed in polished literary Greek and show no signs of translation.⁴⁵ This means the additions have a complex history: some may go back to very early Semitic traditions, while others were composed in Greek to fill perceived gaps in the narrative.

Law summarizes the evidence carefully: "Because several are quoted by Josephus in his Jewish Antiquities (c. 93 CE), they must have been written before the end of the first century, and a note following the final Addition F indicates that at least the A and F Semitic portions had already been written by the late second or early first century BCE."⁴⁶

The critical question — the one that matters most for our purposes — is this: Does the Hebrew version of Esther represent the "original" book, with the Greek additions being later expansions? Or does the Greek version represent a fuller, more complete tradition, with the Hebrew version being a stripped-down text from which the theological elements were removed?

There are strong arguments on both sides. Let me present them fairly.

The case for the Hebrew as original: The Hebrew text of Esther is a tightly structured literary work. Its deliberate omission of God's name may be an intentional literary technique — a way of showing that God works behind the scenes even when He is not named. The "coincidences" in the story (Esther happening to be queen, Mordecai happening to overhear the conspiracy, the king happening to read the chronicles on the night before Haman's plot was to be carried out) are so perfectly timed that the attentive reader cannot miss the hand of divine providence, even though it is never named. On this view, the Greek additions make explicit what the Hebrew text leaves implicit — and in doing so, they diminish the literary artistry of the original.⁴⁷

The case for the Greek as preserving an older tradition: While the literary argument is clever, it does not explain why the Hebrew Esther is the only book in the entire Hebrew Bible that never mentions God. Every other biblical narrative — even those that emphasize human agency — explicitly attributes the outcome to God. The absence of God's name in Hebrew Esther is not merely unusual; it is unique and anomalous. The Greek additions resolve this anomaly by adding what every other biblical narrative has: prayer, divine intervention, and explicit acknowledgment of God's sovereignty. Furthermore, the fact that some of the additions (A, C, D, and F) were translated from Semitic originals suggests that a Semitic tradition of "theological Esther" existed alongside the shorter Hebrew version. The rabbinic tradition may have preferred the shorter version precisely because the longer version was associated with the Greek-speaking Jewish community — and later, with the Christians who adopted the Septuagint as their Bible.⁴⁸

Part Three: What the Additions Tell Us About Canon and Text

Now that we have walked through the content of each addition, let us step back and think about what these texts, taken together, tell us about the nature of the biblical canon and the relationship between the Greek and Hebrew Bible traditions.

1. The Additions Were Part of the Church's Bible from the Beginning

This is the most important point, and it cannot be stated too strongly. The additions to Daniel and Esther were not late arrivals that crept into the Bible over time. They were part of the Septuagint — the Bible of the apostles and the early church. They appear in all three of the great fourth- and fifth-century codices (Vaticanus, Sinaiticus, and Alexandrinus). They are cited and used as Scripture by the earliest church fathers. They were sung in the church's worship (the Song of the Three Young Men), preached in the church's homilies (Susanna, Bel and the Dragon), and defended by the church's greatest scholars (Origen, Rufinus) against those who tried to remove them.

As we discussed in Chapter 3, the great Septuagint codices intersperse the deuterocanonical books among the traditional ones rather than relegating them to a separate section or appendix. The additions to Esther are included as part of Esther. The additions to Daniel are included as part of Daniel. The scribes who produced these codices did not treat these texts as a second-class category of Scripture. They treated them as integral parts of the books to which they belong.⁴⁹

2. The Additions Were Removed by the Same Process That Narrowed the Hebrew Canon

As we argued in Chapter 12, there is strong evidence that the rabbinic establishment of the second century — particularly Rabbi Akiba and his circle — deliberately narrowed the canon of Scripture, excluding books and portions of books that were used by the Christians. The additions to Daniel and Esther were among the casualties of this narrowing. They were part of the Greek Bible that the Christians used, and they were absent from the Hebrew Bible that the rabbis standardized.

This is not a coincidence. The rabbinic community had strong reasons to distance itself from the Greek Scriptures. As we saw in Chapter 13, the rabbis commissioned three entirely new Greek translations (Aquila, Symmachus, and Theodotion) to replace the Septuagint. The narrowing of the Hebrew canon and the rejection of the Greek additions were part of the same process — a process driven by the desire to draw clear boundaries between Judaism and Christianity.

Origen saw this clearly in the third century. In his Letter to Africanus, he argued that the Jewish leadership had removed Susanna and other portions of Scripture from their canon.⁵⁰ And in his Homilies on Leviticus, he explicitly accused the "impious presbyters" of having "cut off from the catalogue of divine Scripture the history of Susanna."⁵¹ Whether or not one accepts every detail of Origen's argument, his basic point deserves serious consideration: the absence of these texts from the Hebrew Bible does not prove they are inauthentic. It may prove the opposite — that they were removed precisely because they were part of the Christian Scriptures.

3. The Theological Contribution of the Additions Is Significant

We should not think of these additions as mere curiosities or literary supplements. They make real theological contributions that enrich our understanding of the biblical faith.

The Prayer of Azariah gives us a model of penitential prayer in the midst of suffering — prayer that acknowledges God's justice even while pleading for His mercy. The Song of the Three Young Men gives us one of the most glorious creation hymns in all of Scripture — a hymn that has been sung by the church for nearly two millennia. Susanna gives us a powerful narrative of God's vindication of the innocent and His judgment on those who abuse their power. Bel and the Dragon gives us a vivid and often humorous polemic against the folly of idolatry.

And the additions to Esther give us something even more profound: they transform a book that seems almost secular into an explicitly theological narrative. They give us the prayers of Mordecai and Esther — prayers that reveal the hearts of these beloved biblical characters in ways the Hebrew text does not. They give us over fifty references to God in a book that otherwise contains none. They give us divine dreams, angelic intervention, and explicit declarations of God's sovereignty. They give us, in short, the theological Esther — the Esther that makes sense as part of the Bible, not just as a historical novella.

4. The Protestant Objections Are Weaker Than They Appear

What are the main Protestant objections to these additions? Let us state them fairly and respond to each.

Objection 1: "These texts are not in the Hebrew Bible." This is true, but as we have argued throughout this book, the Hebrew Bible was not finalized until centuries after Christ, and its contents were shaped by a rabbinic community that had strong reasons to exclude material associated with the Christians. The absence of a text from the Masoretic Text does not prove it is inauthentic. The Dead Sea Scrolls have demonstrated that the Hebrew textual tradition was far more fluid and diverse in the pre-Christian period than was previously assumed (see Chapter 4).

Objection 2: "Some of the additions were originally composed in Greek." This is likely true for the royal edicts in Esther (Additions B and E) and possibly for the Prayer of Azariah. But this does not disqualify them from being inspired. Many scholars believe that portions of the New Testament — including parts of Luke, Acts, and all of Hebrews — show signs of original Greek composition, and no one denies their inspiration on that basis. The language of composition is not a criterion for canonicity.

Objection 3: "The additions contain legendary or miraculous elements." This is true of Bel and the Dragon (the dragon bursting, Habakkuk transported by his hair) and arguably of the additions to Esther (Mordecai's prophetic dream). But miraculous elements are found throughout the canonical Bible — Elijah being fed by ravens, the sun standing still for Joshua, an axe head floating on water. If miraculous content disqualified a text from canonicity, we would have to remove a significant portion of the Old and New Testaments.

Objection 4: "The wordplay in Susanna proves it was composed in Greek." This was Julius Africanus's argument in the third century, and Origen refuted it then. The existence of a wordplay in Greek does not prove Greek composition — it may reflect the translator's skill in finding a parallel pun in the target language. Moreover, as we noted, the Old Greek version of Susanna is about a third shorter than the Theodotionic version, which suggests the story existed in multiple forms — a sign of an ancient and widely circulated tradition, not a late Greek invention.⁵²

Objection 5: "Jerome rejected these additions." Jerome did indeed reject them — or rather, he attempted to remove them from his Latin translation. But as we will discuss in detail in Chapter 27, Jerome's position was a minority view in the early church. His contemporaries — including Rufinus, who accused him of "havoc" — strongly opposed his removal of these texts. Jerome was following the rabbinic Hebrew canon, a criterion that the church had never previously accepted. And, as Gary Michuta argues, Jerome's position amounted to an "illicit removal" that lacked ecclesiastical authority (see Chapter 27 for the full argument).⁵³

5. The Loss of These Texts Has Impoverished the Protestant Bible

I want to close this chapter with a simple but important observation. The removal of the additions to Daniel and Esther from the Protestant Bible has made our Bible poorer. We have lost one of the most beautiful hymns of creation in all of Scripture (the Song of the Three Young Men). We have lost one of the most powerful narratives of justice and courage in the entire Bible (Susanna). We have lost a vivid and often amusing polemic against idolatry (Bel and the Dragon). And we have lost the theological heart of the book of Esther — the prayers, the dreams, and the explicit declarations of God's sovereignty that transform the book from a secular-seeming historical novella into an explicitly theological narrative about God's faithfulness to His people.

These are not trivial losses. And they were imposed on the church not by the apostles, not by the church fathers, not by the ecumenical councils, but by the Protestant Reformers — who were, on this point, following the lead of Jerome, who was following the lead of his rabbinic Jewish teachers, who were following the lead of Rabbi Akiba and the second-century campaign to narrow the Scriptures and distance them from Christian use.

I believe it is time to recover what was lost. The additions to Daniel and Esther are not foreign bodies intruding into the biblical text. They are ancient, beloved, theologically rich compositions that the church received as Scripture from the beginning. They were part of the Bible that built the church — and they deserve to be restored to it.

Conclusion

The additions to Daniel and Esther present us with a test case for the entire argument of this book. If the Septuagint was the Bible of the apostles and the early church — and it was — then the longer versions of Daniel and Esther were the versions that the church read, preached, sang, and defended as Scripture. The shorter Hebrew versions may represent an older compositional stage in some cases, but they also represent the product of a rabbinic tradition that had strong reasons to narrow the canon and distance the Scriptures from Christian use.

The question this chapter has asked — "Expanding the canon or restoring what was lost?" — does not have a simple, one-size-fits-all answer. Some of the additions may have originated as independent compositions that were attached to Daniel and Esther at a relatively early stage. Others may preserve traditions that go back to the very origins of these books. But in every case, the additions were received as Scripture by the believing community, were used in the worship and teaching of the church, and were defended by the church's greatest scholars against those who tried to remove them.

For those of us who take the church's testimony seriously — who believe that the Holy Spirit guided the community of faith in recognizing which books belong in the Bible — the additions to Daniel and Esther belong in the canon. Not because they passed some abstract scholarly test, but because the church, under the guidance of the Spirit, received them as the Word of God. And the church's judgment, on this point, deserves more weight than the judgment of the second-century rabbinic establishment or the sixteenth-century Reformers who followed it.

In the next chapter, we will turn from the individual deuterocanonical books to the broader question of how the early church received and used the deuterocanon as a whole — from the apostolic fathers through the great North African councils of the fourth and fifth centuries.

Bibliography

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Lanier, Gregory R. "The Question of Old Testament Canon." In The Authority of the Septuagint: Biblical, Historical, and Theological Approaches, edited by Gregory R. Lanier and William A. Ross, 18–48. Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2025.

Lanier, Gregory R., and William A. Ross. The Septuagint: What It Is and Why It Matters. Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2021.

Lanier, Gregory R., and William A. Ross, eds. The Authority of the Septuagint: Biblical, Historical, and Theological Approaches. Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2025.

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Ross, William A. "The Septuagint's Theological Significance." In The Authority of the Septuagint: Biblical, Historical, and Theological Approaches, edited by Gregory R. Lanier and William A. Ross, 95–114. Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2025.

Woodward, S. Douglas. Rebooting the Bible: Exposing the Second Century Conspiracy to Corrupt the Scripture and Alter Biblical Chronology. Oklahoma City: Faith Happens, 2018.