The Three Additions to Daniel, a Study

The three apocryphal additions to Daniel have spent centuries in theological exile. The Song of the Three Holy Children, Susanna, and Bel and the Dragon circulated as Scripture for centuries before being relegated to the margins of Christian tradition. William Heaford Daubney's 1906 study reclaiming these texts arrives at a moment when serious biblical scholarship was beginning to ask new questions about what had been dismissed. Daubney mounts a careful defense of these narratives, arguing they deserve rigorous attention not as curiosities but as valuable components of Jewish and Christian literary heritage. He traces their origins, examines the historical skepticism they faced, and illuminates their theological dimensions, the moral wisdom embedded in Susanna's story, the critique of paganism in Bel and the Dragon, the prayer of Azariah in the furnace. His analysis situates these texts within the context of the Babylonian Exile, showing how they functioned as imaginative expansions of Daniel's narrative world. For anyone curious about the hidden margins of Scripture and how certain texts came to be canonical while others were forgotten, this remains a vital piece of early modern biblical scholarship.