Africanus–Origen Correspondence and the Form of Greek Daniel

As often happens in research, while investigating one topic, one becomes distracted by another. In several of my pursuits, the book of Daniel keeps surfacing, and I keep blogging on it. In this post, I tie together a couple of loose threads on the textual form of the book of Greek Daniel.

Order of Sections in Greek Daniel

In a previous post, I noted different orders of the sections/pericopes of the book of Greek Daniel according to B, Q, and Syh. B and Q represent (though with different paratextual features) what appears to have become the dominant order in MSS: Sus–Dan–Bel et Draco, and Syh represented Dan–Sus–Bel–Draco, all set off with separate titles, even though the opening title of the book was “Daniel according to the Seventy” in this same MS. In a post from last week, I commented on Ra 967 in conjunction with my research on Esther but did note that the order of pericopes for Daniel are as follows: Dan–Bel et Draco–Sus, though we can’t be certain whether there were pericope divisions or titles since the joins between Dan–Bel and Draco–Sus in the MS are in lacunae. This MS appears to be the only one that has this order of the sections, and one wonders whether it was because the 2nd/3rd century scribe wanted to place Susanna next to Esther, but I speculate here.

Enter: The Africanus-Origen Correspondence

The Africanus-Origen correspondence probably occurred around 248 AD. This is not the place to launch into all the debates over certain matters in this correspondence (e.g. Origen’s views of the Seventy and Hebrew texts), but there are a couple of places where these letters appear to provide a clue as to the order of the sections of Greek Daniel. First, in Ep. Or. 7, Africanus says, “Now above all these, this pericope (περικοπή) [Susanna] together with the other two at the end (ἐπὶ τῷ τέλει) does not circulate in the [book of] Daniel having been received by/among the Jews.” He does not name Bel et Draco, but he knows of these pericopes at the end of the book and mentions “two other” pericopes–not one.

Rahlfs 967 of the Kölner Papyri of the Institute of Ancient History at the University of Cologne

Ra 967, p. 197

I am researching the reception history of Esther in early Jewish and Christian sources and have come to Rahlfs 967 (2nd/3rd), a papyrus MS containing (with lacunae) Ezekiel (pp. 10–61), Daniel (pp. 62–93r), Bel et Draco (pp. 93v–95), Susanna (pp. 96–98), and Esther (pp. 99–109).

What I didn’t know previously is that the pages of this MS are divided between five different collections. The Verzeichnis (2004; pp. 98–103) lists the following (hyperlinks are to the images online of which I’m aware):

1. Chester Beatty IX + X: pp. 10–17 (upper half); 71–83 (upper half); 102–109 (upper half) (images of the pages from Dublin can be viewed at the CSNTM).
2. Princeton, Univ. Libr., P. Scheide 3: pp. 20 + 22, 23–28, 30–32, 34–37, 40–45 (upper half).
3. Kӧln, IfA, P. Colon. theol. 3–40: pp. 10–17, 20, 22, 71–77, 79–83 (lower half); 90, 92–101 (upper half); pp. 18–19, 21, 29, 53–70, 84–89 (whole) (see images at Kölner Papyri of the Institute of Ancient History at the University of Cologne).
4. Madrid, CSIC (Fonds Photiaded), P. Matr. bibl. 1: pp. 10, 33, 38–39, 46–52.
5. Montserrat, SBO, P.Monts./II Inv. 42. 43: p. 78 (lower half), p. 91 (upper half)

For my purpose, I wanted to see how Esther began and ended in this MS; that is, I was interested to learn about its paratextual features. Unfortunately, there are no visible paratextual features (e.g. title or inscription) except the page number (p. 197) at the beginning, and the end of Esther is not extant in the MS.

Ra 967, p. 196

Of some interest is the placement of Esther after Susanna (p. 196), which contains a subscription: Daniel: [pe]ace to the one who wro[te] and to those who re[ad] amen. In other MSS, the order is Sus–Dan–Bel et Draco, but in this MS, Sus is placed at the end of the book and may have been intended to be joined to Esther, another virtuous woman. Who knows? No other Greek MS has this order. The order Sus–Esth is attested in Syriac MSS.

Both of these images are from the Kölner Papyri collection, and I’m grateful to curator Prof. Dr. Charikleia Armoni for answering my query and directing me to the digitized images and also being willing to send me higher resolution images upon request.

“Daniel” in Select Codices

I have written elsewhere on the (in)significance of the codex for determining the boundaries of an ancient’s canon of Scripture. Probably, historical anachronism has occurred, and we have foisted the significance of our modern, printed Bible on to the ancient codex. So what is the value of the MSS for such studies? They do help in determining a wide range of contents of religious literature as well as provide context for the various orders of books, neither of these aiding in determining a canon.

Though the MSS probably did not help the ancients concretize the canon, they do visualize for us what an ancient scribe or church father meant or conceptualized by the title of a certain book. This may not be a big deal for New Testament studies, but for the Greek Old Testament, we need to take this point to heart. The contents of books such as Jeremiah, 1-2 Esdras, Esther, and Daniel are not very straightforward. Let’s use “Daniel” as a test case by touring some select MS images of the book to see whether our vision of the contents improves. As is well-known, the book of Daniel in Greek was transmitted in quite a different form from the Protestant Bible, taking the form of Susanna-Daniel-Bel and the Dragon in most of the early MSS. We will consider briefly Daniel in Codex Vaticanus (IV), Codex Marchalianus (VI), and Codex Syro-hexaplaris (VIII/IX).