A NOTE ON THIS RENDERING

THE WITNESS — THEODOTION, NOT THE OLD GREEK

This Dani'el does not stand where its neighbours stand, and the reader must be told so at once. For Yeshayahu, Yirmeyahu and Yechezkel this House builds on the SEPTUAGINT. For Dani'el it builds on THEODOTION, and the ruling was made before a line was set. The reason is old and settled: the Church never received the Old Greek Dani'el. It received Theodotion's, and Theodotion's is what the manuscripts carry, what the Fathers quote, and what stands in Brenton. Fourteen chapters, 526 verses. THE COLLATION THAT FOUND NOTHING — AND WHY THAT IS THE PROOF Every book in this Bible is scanned against the Hebrew for matter the Greek has lost, and the Greek's own verse- numbering is the instrument: where it leaps, something is gone. In Yirmeyahu that scan found twenty-seven wounds and restored sixty-eight verses. In Yechezkel it found seven. IN DANI'EL IT FOUND NOTHING AT ALL. Theodotion tracks the Hebrew and the Aramaic verse for verse through all twelve chapters — 1:21, 2:49, 4:37, 7:28, 8:27, 9:27, 10:21, 11:45, 12:13, every count identical. No supply was needed anywhere in this book. That silence is not an absence of work; it is the result of the work, and it is the plainest vindication this House has of the ruling to take Theodotion here. Theodotion exists BECAUSE someone set the Greek Dani'el back against the Hebrew. The scan shows he finished the job. THE OLD GREEK — A SECOND EDITION, AND AN HONEST LIMIT There is another Greek Dani'el, and the reader should know it exists. The Old Greek is not a variant but a genuinely different edition — the Yirmeyahu situation over again — surviving in one Greek manuscript and the Syriac Hexapla. It differs most in chapters four to six, where the king's madness and the fall of Belshatzar are told at different length and in different order. Scholars also read its seventh chapter differently at the great verse: where Theodotion has the Son of Man come TO the Ancient of Days, the Old Greek has been read as bringing Him AS the Ancient of Days — which, if right, sets the two figures together rather than apart. THIS HOUSE HAS NOT COLLATED IT. No Old Greek text was in hand when this volume was set, and the House does not print from memory what it has not weighed. This entry states the shape of the question and no more. When the text is obtained the collation will be made and this note replaced. THE ADDITIONS, IN NARRATIVE PLACE The Prayer of Azaryah and the Song of the Three Children are not appended to this book. They stand where the Greek sets them, inside the furnace, between 3:23 and 3:91 — the three men fall bound into the fire, Azaryah opens his mouth and prays, the Song rises through all creation, and then Nevuchadnetzar hears them singing and rises up in haste. This follows the ruling already made for Ester, whose six Greek Additions were likewise restored to narrative place rather than exiled to an appendix. A NUMBERING THAT LOOKS BROKEN AND IS NOT Within the Song the verse numbers appear to leap from 66 to 71. Nothing is missing. The four verses are present, folded into verse 72 with lettered sub-numbering — 72a and its fellows — a convention of the printed editions, not a wound in the text. It is named here because in every other book of this Bible such a leap WOULD mean loss, and a reader trained by those books would rightly suspect one here. THE SEAM AT FIVE AND SIX The Greek closes chapter five with Belshatzar slain and opens chapter six with Daryavesh receiving the kingdom, exactly where the Aramaic divides it. English Bibles carry that sentence as 5:31. Through chapter six this volume therefore runs ONE VERSE AHEAD of the English: 6:29 here is 6:28 there. Everywhere else the numbering agrees. The seam is bracketed on the page where it falls. THE TWO TONGUES — AND TWO NAMES FOR ONE PHRASE Dani'el is written in two languages. Chapters 1:1–2:4a and 8–12 are HEBREW; chapters 2:4b–7:28 are ARAMAIC. This is not a curiosity, and this House lets it show. At 7:13, which falls in the Aramaic, the phrase is BAR ENASH. At 8:17, which falls in the Hebrew, the same English words render BEN ADAM — the address Yechezkel carries ninety-four times. One phrase in English; two tongues, and two forms, in the text. The House prints both, each in its own place. The Ancient of Days at 7:9 and 7:13 stands as ATIK YOMIN, Aramaic likewise. THE SEVENTY WEEKS — 9:24–27

The Greek reads at 9:26 that after the sixty-two weeks THE ANOINTED ONE SHALL BE DESTROYED, and that there is no judgement in Him. It stands as it stands, in the House's ordinary type, with no mark laid on it and no reckoning of years attempted here. Rule X.4 governs: the arithmetic and the argument belong outside the verse. The House's confession is made plainly elsewhere and is not smuggled into the page through typography. SHOSHANAH AND BEL — CHAPTERS THIRTEEN AND FOURTEEN Both stand in Theodotion; neither stands in the Hebrew or the Aramaic. By the ruling of this House they are bound as chapters 13 and 14 in the received order, after chapter twelve, rather than set adrift as separate volumes. Shoshanah is sixty-four verses, and the young Dani'el rises in it to part the two elders and try them separately. Bel and the Dragon is forty-two, and carries Chavakuk lifted by the hair of his head to bring pottage to the lions' den. A CAUTION ON ONE NAME Brenton uses BALTASAR for two different people: the Babylonian name given to Dani'el at 1:7, and King Belshatzar of chapter five. The House separates them — Belteshatzar for the prophet, Belshatzar for the king — but the separation was made by rule, chapter by chapter, and chapter five names both men. THIS IS THE ONE PLACE IN THIS VOLUME MOST WORTH A PROOF-READER'S EYE. THE TONGUE The names stand in the House manner — Dani'el, Chananyah, Misha'el and Azaryah, renamed Belteshatzar, Shadrach, Meshach and Aved-Nego; Ashpenaz the chief of the eunuchs and Meltzar set over them; Nevuchadnetzar and Belshatzar of Bavel; Daryavesh the Mede and Koresh of Paras; Micha'el and Gavri'el; Shoshanah; Chavakuk. Brenton's Greek spellings are restored to their Hebrew and Aramaic: Sennaar to Shinar, Asphanez to Ashpenaz, Amelsad to Meltzar, Sedrach to Shadrach, Abdenago to Aved-Nego, Ambacum to Chavakuk. YAHUAH is never glossed. Fifty-five terms take the green gloss at first appearance and stand bare thereafter. Beyond the names, the THINGS of this book are restored to the tongue the book itself speaks, and the register follows the text: in the Aramaic chapters the raz is the mystery and the peshar its interpretation, the chelem is the dream, Elah Shemaya the God of heaven, Illaya the Most High, the attun nura the burning fiery furnace, the gob aryavata the den of lions, and the ir v’kadish the watcher and holy one who comes down; in the Hebrew chapters the same words stand as sod, pesher and chalom. Also restored: the chakimin, chartumim, ashafim and gazrin whom the king calls and who cannot answer; the tzelem on the plain of Dura; the medinah of Bavel; the Mikdash; the shavuim of the seventy; and the shikutz meshomem. ONE RESTORATION ABOVE ALL: at 9:25 Brenton prints CHRIST THE PRINCE — a Greek word standing in the middle of a Hebraic Bible. It stands here as MASHIACH NAGID, and at 9:26 as MASHIACH, which is what the text has always said. Seventy-seven terms take the green gloss at first appearance. RULE X.4 The text is rendered as it stands. The furnace is not cooled, nor the den softened, nor the king's madness among the beasts abridged, nor the elders of Shoshanah's story spared. Where this book differs from its neighbours it differs openly: a different Greek witness, named on the title leaf and argued in this note; no supplied Hebrew, because none was needed; and one second edition left uncollated and said to be uncollated. Interpretation belongs to this note. The verse keeps the prophet's own voice.